be quiet! Dark Power Pro 10 Modular 80+ Platinum PSU Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2013-05-07
·
2,915 words · ~14 min read
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welcome to my unboxing of something that
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at this time is pretty difficult to get in North America this is a be quiet! no
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that's not how you say this is a be quiet! dark Power Pro 10 high-end see
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they helpfully call that out for you high-end power supply this is an 80 plus
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Platinum power supply this is what they consider to be a no compromises product
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so that means even everything down to spending more on the fan that's cooling
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it they are using their own here they go
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very well reged silent Wing fan see right there
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you can see they're using a custom fan they're using a custom enclosure they're
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using custom pretty much everything because again no compromises so the
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highest efficiency the a fully modular
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inter interface let's just I mean we'll get it open but no compromise silence
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and performance so using virtually in audible silent Wings fan world class
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efficiency up to 94% top performance overclocking key for multi or single
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rail use that's cool actually so you can actually switch Professional Cable
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Management 5year warranty let's go ahead and have a look at what else they have
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to say for themselves here so 80 plus Platinum versus 80 plus I guess those
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graphs look more impressive if your graph starts at 75% but trust me it does
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make a difference dark Power Pro certification allows you to save up to
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34 in electricity versus a standard 80 plus per year perom that's sort of a
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more European so this is a European brand actually that's something you guys
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should be aware of this is a German brand and you know there's there's my
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card to give you some idea what I think of German Brands
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um it is a little different and you know
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what it's not it's not racism it's not like you
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know it it's just different I I mean
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it's it's the kinds of details that matter to German versus the kinds of
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details that matter to for example the Japanese like Japanese why they're known
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for their capacitors whereas that car for example is just it feels really
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solid it's kind of heavy it doesn't perform that great it's a rabbit by the
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way in case you guys can't tell but little things like when you close the
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doors like it just it feels like really
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solid the car actually has a uh um a
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completely welded frame so there aren't any seams there are no bolts in terms of
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the of the outer shell of the car which is which is kind of neat so anyway okay
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so the car is not related to the power supply other than the fact that they are
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both designed in Germany and I have a
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bit of a of a sort of German engineered bias let's just put it that way speaking
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of engineering be quiet! is not a rebrander so if they I mean power
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supplies it's no secret that every power supply is made in Asia somewhere so no
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it's not manufactured in Germany I'm sorry however be quiet! unle like many
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other companies out there is not simply taking a design that someone else worked
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on and rebranding it so what they're doing is they are designing the power
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supply they are designing the specification if somehow you know
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someone can produce something where they've already got a kitted thing that's ready to go that meets their spec
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then that's one thing but otherwise they are actually having it fully built from
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the ground up according to their own spec so what that means is little things
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like if you guys have paid any attention to my videos over the years you'll I
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hate coil wine be quiet! does not accept coil wine they don't accept electrical
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noise because the worst thing in the world is a great power supply with a
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quiet fan that goes when it's underload because there's
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some coil somewhere or some component inside that's making electrical noise
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totally unacceptable so we're going to fire this guy up just to make sure that what I'm saying is accurate but from
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what I understand about this brand about what they're about is that they would
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not accept that in any way shape or form
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so let's go ahead and have a look at the English so multi CPU based okay
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virtually in audible thanks to the silent Wings fan long lifeband up to
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300,000 hours thanks to a fluid Dynamic bearing with copper core an individually
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balanced fan wheel yes their fans are serious business guys very well regarded
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worldwide like right up there with the no tuas of the world so bear that in
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mind you are getting a good fan with your power supply and you don't have to
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you know do a dangerous fan swap in your PSU in order to make it happen so yeah
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the OC key for either multirail or single Rail and actually here we can
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have a look so if you decide to go multi- rail it'll be four rails and if
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you decide to go single rail then it'll be a single 70 amp rail capable of
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providing almost the entire maximum output of the power supply on the single
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rail J Le efficient straight forward
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optimal cooling system and okay let's go
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ahead and actually that's really cool check this out has direct connectors for
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up to four fans so the fan control can actually be done by your power supply
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which is like the smartest thing ever because I would trust these guys to
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manage my fans correctly versus a lot of the tools that I've seen built into
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motherboards and other things like that I mean personally I'm using a te
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balancer so it's a non-factor for me but not everyone has that luxury pretty
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decent sleeving not the best I've seen it's certainly not the worst I've seen
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you can see it's uh even though they're using fully colored cables underneath it
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is looks pretty good even when you bend it like that okay and this is kind of
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neat got like a rubberized like thing going on here for where the 24 pin comes
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out of the power supply so it's not fully modular but it is almost fully
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modular and since every system needs a
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24 pin um and someone's going to be a
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smartass and sort of uh make some comment about a system that wouldn't
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need a 24 pin but you're wrong they all need 24 pins if they're real systems uh
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these are the fan connectors so you can this is kind of neat because even Molex
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fans can now be managed by your power supply or you can plug in a three pin
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very good stuff okay so it comes with four of those would have liked to see
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those black but not the end of the world they're fairly easy to sleeve for what
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it's worth because they've got these nice small connectors on the
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ends this is cool so this is the uh the OC key
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evidently so you go ahead you plug that in there you can actually you can
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actually change it no way I thought it was something where
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it's like you know you set up your system you like put it in or don't put
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it in but oh wait no no no hold on yeah no you can okay so you can either just
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jump it per look at all these options this is hilarious so you can either jump
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for it permanently or you can go well I might want to switch between multi rail
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or single rail sometime in the future and you can include this just like that
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okay uh you can tell this is a sample unit from Europe because this won't be
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useful to me but okay there you go comes with the manual so it's available in a
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variet of different wattages 8 51,200 for the dark Power Pro 10 Deutch English
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safety instructions stuff like that and this is very nice I love matte black
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boxes with silver writing that's just the best thing
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ever these look very nice too actually these feel good you can often tell are
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they using high quality wires inside or
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are they not just by taking the cables and feeling them again actually this
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might be better sleeving than what's on here uh no it's the same okay maybe I
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just sort of maybe I was judging this too harshly cuz the sleeving looks and
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feels really good very flexible um very
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difficult to see even no matter what I do to it you can't really see through it
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very well very nice cable sleeving and lots of included module cables let's see
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what we got going on in here okay give me a sec you know what I'll just plug
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things in and then we'll have a look now this is actually one of the most
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flexible and smartest modular cable uh
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packages that I've ever seen um yeah I'm
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not going to not going to mince words about it because this is outstanding so
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a couple things okay number one yes 850 W power supply so why would you need six
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PCIe 8pin connectors I will tell you why you need that because it's not
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necessarily for a triple GPU setup it could be for a dual GPU setup where for
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example you know not that cards like this
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exist a single card might have three PCIe connectors on it then they give you
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an additional single PCI E6 pin that can
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also plug in which you know not that not that these exist but you know I heard
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that there was a rumor that there might be like motherboards coming in the
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future that have an auxiliary six pin PCIe connector so you see these
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configurations on the motherboards and on the video cards and you kind of go
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what power supply is actually designed to run a couple of lightnings in SLI
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with a six pin auxiliary connector plugged into the board this is the only power supply I've ever seen where you
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won't have to do something goofy like plug in sort of too many connectors or
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two few connectors depending on your config very smart the way they've done
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the PCIe so there you go and each harness uh gives you two 6 Plus tws okay
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moving right along so the 24 pin goes over there ah yes the CPU connector so
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you can see the modular cable includes a 4 plus4 or an 8 Pin and they're both
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attached and I've seen this a lot of times where modular power supplies will
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not really give you any flexibility like uh for example the cougar
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sx850 the modular or not modular I don't remember whatever the cable for the CPU
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power connector has like two eight pins and a four pin on one harness I'm
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looking at this going are you kidding me how many boards need that well be quiet!
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thought of that so they include that one or they include a single eight pin or
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they include a single four pin totally up to you what you want to plug into
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that slot since you can configure figed as a single rail power supply anyway it
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doesn't matter if you're doing two connectors off one port or one connector
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off one port or whatever else the case may be now again
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like cardinal sin number one on power supplies is making a modular interface
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with five plugs and including five cables that are just you know like
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there's two Molex harnesses and then like three SATA harness and you're like
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okay so I plugged them all in now it's not modular anymore because everything
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you plugged in is everything that you could possibly need and you get like and
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every harness looks like this now you might have a system that needs you know
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two satas and then a couple moxes and then a floppy or you might not so
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they've included a lot of smart harnesses this one for example I only
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have a single MOX connector that I need in my system on the back oh actually no
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I have two now well at any rate uh I used to only have a single one and I
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could just use two of these see two uh so I have two that I need one plugs into
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the back of my Zonar zense sound card and the other one plugs into my mCP 655
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pump that's it so why do I have to attach a huge harness with four
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connectors when I have a modular power supply why aren't they including options
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that I care about so you got two single MOX ones you've also got this one a
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single SATA one you've got a multi-a one so this guy has what three SATA
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connectors this guy's got three SATA connectors you've got a three Mo X1
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you've got a two mole x one and a floppy you got that one I showed you before
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with the couple satas and a few Molex and two moxes and a floppy so you've
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actually got flexibility you've actually got options in terms of what you're
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plugging into your modular interface now we haven't taken a close look at the
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overall fit and finish of the power supply yet and that is again where the
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whole you know German engineering etc etc thing that Volkswagen would have you
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believe uh really starts to come in so everything looks really good you know
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you got your silver and your 80 plus platinum and your warranty void okay
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that doesn't look very good but other than that um this is unique haven't seen
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anything like this before so it's got a fan grill that you know you not it's not
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going to be a problem you're not going to be able to accidentally like touch the fan but I guess if you wanted to
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touch the fan you could looks very slick anyway that's for sure especially with
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that fan spinning in there that looks great oh
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yeah they've got everything oriented correctly so as long as you've got a
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sort of 99.9% of cases out there that mount the power that have the window on
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this side uh the text will be right side up no matter what you do and ah this is
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smart too that warranty void if removed is on the side where you're less likely
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to have it facing because this on most
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cases these days will draw air in right from the bottom of the case through a filter and you will see just this looks
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good check this out as well see this
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rubber noise dampening so that will keep
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vibrations from passing from the power supply to the case just another you know
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nice little touch that I haven't seen before and uh makes sets this a little
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bit apart from the competition that does not include noise isolators on their
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power supplies so whether you're case includes it or not you will have a noise
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dampened vibration isolating power supply no matter
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what cuz the Germans have deemed it to be lustly uh so thank you for checking
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out my unboxing and terrible German accent I'm just never going to do that
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again of the dark Power Pro 10 from be
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quiet a bad joke too and don't forget to subscribe to L Tech tips for more
13:22
unboxings reviews and other computer videos and we missed something check
13:27
this out so they actually include Cable
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Management velcros which is not unique
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at all uh lots of guys include these however normally when you see these
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included they include like two or three
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be quiet! has included a whack of them I
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mean we could count them if we wanted 1 2 3 4 5 6 10 of them which is actually
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enough to help cable manage your system because it's one thing when they're just
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making a gesture of you know oh yeah we included Cable Management uh Pros but
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it's another thing when they actually include enough that you can actually cable manage your whole system with them
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very cool stuff also some zip ties okay
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just a few of those and this is what I'm actually excited
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about oh yes sexy thumb screws I mean it does not
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get any better than that that is your power supply mounting screw that is
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beastly way to go be
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quiet