Cooler Master V650 Gold Power Supply Review

The V650 Gold is expensive and its performance is not up to the competition's levels.

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Protection Features

Check out our PSUs 101 article to learn more about PSU protection features.

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Protection Features

 

OCP

12V: 65A (104.84%), 12.210V 5V: 29.7A (148.5%), 5.123V 3.3V: 30.3A (151.5%), 3.391V 5VSB: 4.3A (143.33%), 4.822V

OPP

909.17W (121.22%)

OTP

✓ (140°C @ 12V Heat Sink)

SCP

12V: ✓ 5V: ✓ 3.3V: ✓ 5VSB: ✓ -12V: ✓

PWR_OK

Proper Operation

NLO

SIP

Surge: ✗ Inrush: ✗

The OCP triggering point at +12V is set quite low. On the contrary, the OCP points on the minor rails are set too high, but they don't cause any load regulation and/or ripple problems.

The OPP is within 130% ,so it is configured correctly, and the over-temperature protection is present and works well. The only, and notable, complaint here is the lack of surge and inrush current protection. This is a huge letdown,from a PSU based on a modern platform.

DC Power Sequencing

According to Intel’s most recent Power Supply Design Guide (revision 1.4), the +12V and 5V outputs must be equal to or greater than the 3.3V rail at all times. Unfortunately, Intel doesn't mention why it is so important to always keep the 3.3V rail's voltage lower than the levels of the other two outputs.

There are no problems here, since the 3.3V rail is always lower than other two. 

Cross Load Tests

To generate the following charts, we set our loaders to auto mode through custom-made software before trying more than 25,000 possible load combinations with the +12V, 5V, and 3.3V rails. The deviations in each of the charts below are calculated by taking the nominal values of the rails (12V, 5V, and 3.3V) as point zero. The ambient temperature during testing was between 30 to 32 degrees Celsius (86 to 89.6 degrees Fahrenheit).

Load Regulation Charts

Efficiency Chart

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Ripple Charts

The lower the power supply's ripple, the more stable the system will be and less stress will also be applied to its components.

Infrared Images

We apply a half-load for 10 minutes with the PSU's top cover and cooling fan removed before taking photos with a modified FLIR E4 camera able to deliver an IR resolution of 320x240 (76,800 pixels).

As usual, the highest temperatures are at the voltage regulation modules that generate the minor rails. In the rest areas, the temperatures are at normal levels.

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Aris Mpitziopoulos
Contributing Editor

Aris Mpitziopoulos is a contributing editor at Tom's Hardware, covering PSUs.