Cooler Master Silent Pro M 600W PSU

One thing that most people rarely put much thought into when buying a computer is the power supply unit (PSU). They are more concerned with how much money they can save on it, how fast the CPU is or how good the graphics card is. The thing that a lot of people overlook is that the PSU is the key to a powerful computer. If you add an extra hard drive or a more powerful video card and you do not have enough power, weird things can happen. Oddities like drives disappearing for no good reason or glitches and artifacts appearing in your display. On the outside rare occasion the computer's processor could even be damaged from running with insufficient power. The more good, clean power your PSU puts out means the more components you can safely power inside the computer. We're going to take a look at the Cooler Master Silent Pro M 600W to see if it can handle today's demanding computer components.

Design

The Cooler Master Silent Pro M 600W is what is called a Modular Power Supply. It is an EATX power supply that fits 20 and 24-pin motherboards. It is one of the latest PSUs on the market to feature 50A on the 12V rail, which means can power a dual video card setup with no problem whatsoever.

It comes with silicon mounting grommets you install around the outer edges to help keep noise down and utilizes removable cables instead of having them hard wired into the PSU. This is so you only use the cables you need and that means the inside of the case is more open for air movement making it a cooler environment for the computer components. The PSU provides enough power to run any home computer and even small servers. It boasts 600 Watts of power with an MTBF of 100,000 hours. It is also SLI certified with two PCI-Express power leads for dual cards. It uses trustworthy Japanese-made capacitors and also sports a copper/aluminum heatsink for efficient cooling.

Cooler Master Silent Pro M Box	Contents	Side Logo

Specifications

• Model: RS-600-AMBA-D3
• Type: Intel Form Factor ATX 12V V2.3
• Input Voltage: 90-264V (Auto Range)
• Input Current: 10A at 115Vac; 5A at 230Vac
• Input Frequency Range: 47-63Hz
• Output Capacity: 600W
• Max. Output Capacity: 720W
• Fan: 135mm ultra silent fan
• Power Good Signal: 100-500ms
• Hold Up Time: >17ms
• Efficiency: 85% Typically
• MTBF: 100,000 hrs.
• Protection: OVP/UVP/OCP/OPP/OTP/SCP/OLP
• Dimensions: 150 x 150 x 86mm
• Operating Temperature: 0 - 40º C
• Regulatory: NEMKO/TUV/CE/GOST/C-tick/FCC/UL
• Certification: SLI / 80Plus
• Connectors
  
  
  
  • Motherboard: 20+4 Pin connector X1

  • CPU: 4+4 Pin X1

  • PCI-E: 6+2 Pin x2

  • 4 Pin peripheral X5

  • SATA X9

  • 4 Pin Floppy x1

Installation

The PSU was installed into an existing computer replacing an older Ultra brand 450W power supply. The installation was rather smooth except we had to remove the silicon grommets before we could install the PSU. The case already had rubber padding in the PSU mounts and the added silicon grommets made it just a little too thick to fit into the mounts. Once we removed the silicon grommets the installation was a breeze. One of the highlights about this particular PSU is the modular cable system. The PC only has two drives - a hard drive and a DVD drive; so we only needed one cable for the drives.

We used another for the PCI-Express to power the graphics card and another to power the case fans. The lack of extra cables dangling around inside the case made it much easier to work inside the case and left room for more airflow after putting the side panel back on.

Unpacked	Rear View	Installed with no cables

Usage and Testing

Test setup:

• Motherboard: ECS G45-MT2
• CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad E6600 @ 2.40GHz
• Memory: 4GB G-Skill DDR2 6400
• CPU Heatsink: Noctua NH-C12P
• Video card: EVGA GeForce 8800 GT 512MB
• Hard Drive: Hitachi 500GB SATA + 2 more for test purposes
• Operating System: Vista Home Premium x64

As far as powering the PC, the Silent Pro M 600 is a workhorse. We installed two extra hard drives - two Hitachi SATA 3Gb 500B 7200 RPM drives – and a second DVD drive. The DVD drive was also an SATA 3Gb drive and all drives used SATA power. The Silent Pro M power supply did not hiccup even when two or more drives were active at the same time. After installing all of this, I took the opportunity to do some gaming to provide some real world testing. Games played were a couple of my favorites - “World of Warcraft” and “CounterStrike:Source”. Gaming on the PC with a powerful PCI-Express graphics card was a breeze – it did not faze the PSU at all.

As far as temperature measurements go, with only the PSU different the internal average ambient temperature of the case dropped a very cool 4ºC. The original PSU was not the best model under the sun, but it was not a generic brand either. The drop in temperature was nice to see from a more efficient power supply.

Noise

The noise from the PSU is practically non-existent. In my test rig you can't really hear the fan at all and the rubber mounts in our case kept vibration to a nil. I would assume that the silicon grommet would have the same effect in a case that did not already have built-in rubber vibration negation pads. So, marketing claims can be put aside - the name "Silent Pro" is factual for this PSU.

Installed Overhead View		Installed with cables

Cooler Master Silent Pro M 600W PSU

The Cooler Master Silent Pro M 600 is an excellent PSU for use in any home PC, office PC or even small server systems. It proved to be completely reliable in this gamers rig. It is a very sporty looking power supply and provides ample power for today's power hungry computer systems. It runs virtually silently and does not introduce much heat to the system. It cools itself efficiently and quietly. Hey, and if you need a little more power than 600W you're in luck because they have a 700W model as well.

Available for around $100-$120 USD at online retailers, the price of this power supply is a tad higher than most others. There are certainly more expensive offerings, but you should expect to pay a slight premium for 80Plus SLI certification and near silent operation.

Pros: Good clean power, silent and efficient cooling, modular cable system.

Cons: Silicon grommet may not fit in all cases, priced higher than many other 600W PSUs.

Rating: 4.0 out of 5

www.coolermaster.com