We've seen Cooler Master launch two power supply families in the past year or so. At the end of 2011, it introduced the Silent Pro Hybrid series. This line-up of 80 PLUS Gold-rated PSUs shuts its fan off under low-load conditions where moderate ambient temperatures allow. The fan switches on when the load exceeds right around 200 W.
Cooler Master's Silent Pro Platinum family ups the ante, according to the company's spec sheet.
We received a 550 W entry-level model, and the feature list is impressive: fully sleeved permanent cables, flat modular cables, and lots of connectors, namely four PCIe, five Molex, and a whopping nine SATA connectors. However, we wish that it came with longer cables, as 27.5” may be a tad short if you want to route them behind a motherboard tray.
This power supply sports a single 12 V rail, which can be loaded with up to 45 A. It ships in a huge cardboard box, with the power supply nestled into a soft, velvet-like bag. Although it looked nice, we weren't big fans of the overpowering chemical smell the bag was emitting.
| Cooler Master Silent Pro Platinum 550 W | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AC Input | 100-240 V, 50-60 Hz | |||||||
| DC Output | +3.3 V | +5 V | +12 V (#1) | +12 V (#2) | +12 V (#3) | +12 V (#4) | -12 V | +5 Vsb |
| 25 A | 25 S | 45 A | n/a | n/a | n/a | 0.3 A | 3.5 A | |
| Individual Output | 32 A | 17.5 W | 10.5 W | |||||
| Rail Utilization | Sys | Sys | CPU And VGA | |||||
| Combined Output | 150 W | 540 W | ||||||
| Total Continuous Output | 550 W | |||||||
| Peak Output | n/a | |||||||
- In The Power Supply World, Gold Paves The Way For Platinum
- Antec EarthWatts Platinum 550 W
- Results: EarthWatts Platinum 550 W
- Enermax Platimax 600 W
- Results: Enermax Platimax 600 W
- Kingwin Lazer Platinum 550 W
- Results: Kingwin Lazer Platinum 550 W
- Cooler Master Silent Pro Platinum 550 W
- Results: Silent Pro Platinum 550 W
- Rosewill Fortress 550
- Results: Rosewill Fortress 550
- Test Setup, Hold-Up Time, And Inrush Current
- Efficiency (According To The 80 PLUS Spec)
- Efficiency (Based On Performance Profiles)
- Which Platinum-Rated Power Supply Should You Buy?







and i was making popcorn.
and i was making popcorn.
Pleasant read, though, I like PSU reviews.
they asked for vendors for the PSUs. Theres the offshoot chance that seasonic declined the offer. On other sites, the 520w fanless seasonic unit was compared to Rosewill's 500w silent night unit. The seasonic unit I believe in that review barely edged out a victory.
I believe this is still applicable to all of the power supply testing our German team does: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/psu-test-equipment,2657.html. I'm waiting for confirmation that I'm right.
Edit: Yup, that's the correct testing equipment/procedure!
Why is the 80 plus spec officially test by having more load on the 3.3v and 5v rails?
Clearly loading the 12v rail would give us a better overall image
Never mind I see the ripple data buried in the individual tests. It would have been better in the summary side-by-side tests.
Nice article.
Sorry!
The page you requested couldn't be found
fix'd that for ya
Sorry, take the period out of the end of the URL.
Your priorities are obviously backwards. Rosewill's entry, by your testing, failed to meet ATX spec by producing an unacceptable amplitude of ripple on the 12V rail. By definition, this is a fail. This isn't a minor flaw, this is violating spec. A failure can not stand out from the crowd (at least in a positive sense). Now, there are other posters here that dispute your results, but you don't have that luxury. Both your results and summary comments indicate that this unit is a failure no matter how good the efficiency, price, or other metrics look.
You can argue the importance of efficiency versus DC output quality all you want when the unit meets spec, but all of the components in your system rely on PSUs to actually meeting spec in order to function properly. Without meeting spec, there is no way to guarantee components will work properly. In fact, failing to meet spec pretty much guarantees that some component somewhere will not work properly. I've seen enough devices (granted poorly designed) fail to work properly with PSUs that had ugly DC quality, but were technically within spec to recommend one that is out of spec.
Also, the difference in cost between the Gold and Platinum rated models seems to negate the power savings one would realize by going with a Platinum model. Since I do run a few of my machines 24/7, I am curious to see where the efficiency lies for low power consumption for a variety of 80+ certified models as this level of power consumption occupies a large majority of the up-time (70+%).