Cooler Master Announces a $1K PSU, The MasterWatt Maker 1200 MIJ

Cooler Master spent years on the MasterWatt Maker 1200 MIJ. At first the project was supposed to result in a fully digital PSU, but when the company showed off the almost-finished platform at CES in January, it revealed that its goals had changed. Despite our initial disappointment--we're big on digital platforms--we decided to wait and see how the platform performed. Two of the best PSU OEMs, Seasonic and Super Flower, still haven't released a digital platform, after all, and instead continue to use the more affordable and reliable analog platforms.

For the MasterWatt Maker 1200 MIJ (Made In Japan) Cooler Master decided to cooperate with a new name in this field, Murata Manufacturing, a giant company that designs, manufacturers, and supplies in large quantities advanced electronic materials and various electronic components in general. Murata was already into the AC-DC power supply market, however it previously only manufactured server type, open frame, LED lighting power modules and enclosed front-end PSUs. This is the first time Murata designed and built a normal desktop PSU, and we're anxious to see the final result. We just hope that this won't be a single effort and Murata will enter the desktop PSU market with more models, and cooperate with more companies in the future. Needless to say that the more PSU OEMs, the more choices companies will have, and the increased competition might also push down prices. (Although in Murata's case the offered prices seem to be really high, judging by the huge price tag that its first desktop PSU carries.)

According to Cooler Master, over 160,000 hours were spent with 40 Murata engineers to create this PSU. This shows how large this product was and with 40 engineers devoted on the design of a single PSU, we expect the result to be flawless. What we cannot understand, still, is why the final project didn't follow the digital path but ended up using an analog platform in the end. For us digital is the only way to create a really future-proof PSU, leaving analog platforms for the vintage lovers. We may sound harsh, but the king of our charts is still the several-year-old Corsair AX1500i, which is based on a second-generation fully digital platform made by Flextronics.

The MasterWatt Maker 1200 MIJ's number of available PCIe and SATA connectors is very high. The same goes for the 4-Pin Molex ones. Another thing worth noticing in the table above is the unit's extended depth, which reaches 224mm. With such large dimensions you'll need a full-tower chassis for this PSU: With 1.2kW capacity it would be pointless to install this unit in a small chassis, powering only a few components instead of 3-4x graphics cards along with a dozen HDDs and other devices.

The MasterWatt Maker 1200 MIJ naturally uses many Murata-made components, which offer increased reliability as well as high performance. Cooler Master said that many of those components are rated to operate at up to 150°C temperatures. This may sound impressive, but the truth is that such high temperature tolerant components are used in all quality PSUs. A major difference with this unit, however, is the special Murata-designed planar transformer, which means with a first look this PSU's platform seems completely different to the ones we've encountered before.

This by far is the most expensive desktop PSU to date, with a retail price of $999 or 999€ in the EU market. It will be available worldwide this month, according to Cooler Master. In a snap, this product's highlights are:

• 80 PLUS Titanium efficiency
• Fanless operation up to 600W load
• 80% Japanese components (with 20 components being special designed by Murata especially for this platform)
• 10-year transferable warranty
• Fully modular cable design

We have a MasterWatt Maker 1200 MIJ which will meet our load testers in the following days. We plan to push it really hard, because simply there's no room for downsides in a $1,000 PSU.