The unit up close

The internals are cooled by a large 120mm fan; the backside has honey comb structure to allow the air to pass unrestricted.



This fan is not running at full speed of course, its speed is controlled by the Load the PSU is currently handling, during heavy gaming the fan will ramp up its RPM – during quiet internet browsing sessions or DVD watching it will slow down and become totally silent.

Coolermaster has a small graph on their product page; from the values in there it seems to be an honest representation of noise production. Sadly I couldn’t find at what distance the dBA measured were taken or what the ambient noise was.



I recently acquired a dBA meter which I have to get calibrated first before I’m confident of giving you any measurements I’ve recorded. CM states that at full load the fan will produce close to 40dBA, knowing that your average room is in the 35~40dBA range it would mean the unit’s noise will be indiscernible. I could not hear the unit running, with 2x7800GTX video cards in my test system, that’s not too difficult though.


Gimmick?

The small total power consumption meter fits into a free floppy drive bay (3.5”) and displays the system’s total load. However the values might be a bit on the “low” side compared to actual usage numbers according to X-Bit Labs who checked out the previous edition. The 550W’s meter does not look much different; it’s more for show and not to be used as an accurate tool.



Still, it adds a bit of *bling* to your case, and more dials to look at.


Installation

Like any other Power Supply, this unit is installed very easily, inside my Lian-Li there’s plenty of space



In a more traditional ATX case the 120mm would be positioned over the CPU area, drawing in hot air and blowing it out the back.



The cables are long enough to reach even the furthest hardware components inside this massive case, good cable management will optimize the airflow inside your case, so it’s important that you tuck the excess of cables away nicely. In the photo above you can see that the cables are laid out a bit randomly, the PSU cable is blocking the CPU cooler partially, so I have my work cut out for me there.

Testing and conclusion on the next page ->