Providing clean power to all the components is a crucial function of the power supply. Clean power doesn't mean just proving the voltage and amperage needed to power up the components; it also means providing a very little variation of DC output also called ripple. Just as much as heat kills components, so does "dirty" power. Ripple is caused by the conversion of AC or Alternating Current to DC, or Direct Current, ripple is due to the incomplete conversion process. All components that make up the PC are powered from DC. Some voltages for the major componenets range from as small as .086 volts all the way up to 12 volts.

Today we are looking at the latest entry in CoolerMaster's Silent Pro M2 line which boasts a 1500 watt total power output on two 12 volt rails. This semi-modular design should provide enough power to service even the most power hungry PC system.

Before I go on I want to clear somthing up. Power supply testing is a tricky business. In order to properly and thoroughly test any power supply there is a range of special equipment needed. Slapping in the highest end components one can find isn't going to necessarily load up the power supply. So to proplerly test the power supplies some of the equipment needed is a load tester with verified electrical loads, oscilloscopes, voltmeters and a few other odds and ends. Before we go on, I want to make it very clear that none of the reviewers at UMLan yet possess this equipment and the testing that we perform is what the motherboard reports back. We are currently in the process, albit a long one, of aquiring such equipment so that we can bring you the most accurate reviews that we can. So instead of calling this a review, I am considering it a 1st look.

 

About the Product

The following information was provided by the Cooler Master web site and used for general specifications.

 

Now that we got basic information out of the way, let’s take a closer look at the Cooler Master Silent Pro M2 1500 watt power supply.

 

Closer look

Front Shot		Rear Shot

The Cooler Master Silent Pro M2 1500 watt power supply is encased in a well designed package. The front of the package is designed to get your attention, which it does. It also give a little bit of information on the front, such as the the fan size and dual 12 volt rails. The back of the box goes into greater detail about the power supply. As well as graphing out the the relationship of fan speed to load and load to efficiency. The average efficiency of this power supply is 88%.

Packaging		Accessories

Lifting the lid on the box reveals that coolermaster wants to preserve the form and function of the power supply as well as the looks. The power supply is protected by a layer of light weight foam packaging as well as a plastic bag to keep the scratches at bay. Taking the everything out of the box. You can see that there are four modular cable bundles for PCIE, SATA, peripherals, etc. This power supply is massive and has some heft to it. It comes in at 5.9 x 8.6 x 3.4 " (W/H/D). It's not small so be sure to make sure it will fit your case before purchasing. The reason for the massiveness of the power supply is both for cooling and it takes a lot to output 1500 watts of DC power from AC, hence the 135 MM fan.

Power Input & Switch		Semi-Modular Connectors

Side View

 

Here's the business ends of the power supply. The input side has an information sticker detailing the specifics for each voltage range needed for the power supply to operate correctly, for the 120v circuit you should have a minimum of 16A and for the 240 volt circut you should have a minimum of 10 A. Failure to meet these minimum requirements could casue the power supply to malfuction and could lead to damaged system components. On the far end you have the modular connections. The power supply cables for the motherboard and CPU power cables are built in and cannot be removed. This is the reason that I call it a semi-modular power supply. There are units out that will allow the user to remove all the cables from the power supply if they so desire. To be honest, Cooler Master has gone well above and beyond with the sheer amount of connectors. With all the cables you get one 24 pin motherboard connector, two 8 pin CPU power connectors, six 8 pin PCIE connectors, six 6+2 PCI-E power connecotrs, twelve SATA connectors, five 4 pin Molex connector and one 4 pin floppy connection.

Specifications		Power Supply Fan

The top of the power supply details the specifications of the unit. Cooler master uses two 12 volt rails to provide 1500 watts of power. One 12 v rail can supply 70 amps and the other rail can handle 55 amps for a combined wattage of 1440 watts. The 3.3v and 5v side can supply 150 watts of power at 30 amps, while the -12v and -5v sides bring up the rear at 3.6 watts and 17.5 watts respectively for a total output of 1500 watts. The 135 mm fan provides the cooling for such a massive conversion. To convert from AC to DC generates quite a bit of heat, that heat needs to be dissapated as it will shorten the life of the power supply. With my current set up I didn't hear the fan spin up at all.

Dual 8 Pin Motherboard Power Connectors		PCI Express Power Connectors

Motherboard Power Connector

The build in connectors are sheathed in a black nylon sleeve to help prevent wire snags, chafing, and provides an overall cleaner install as the individual wires are all kept nice and neat. The modular cables are all flat and can be routed very easily. Flat wires help with air flow and installation. During our testing, I used only one modular SATA connector which powered up 3 hard drives and one 4 pin Molex connector for the case fans. The rest of the connections were made using the power connectors that are built in to the power supply.

 

Testing

Test System 

GIGABYTE Z77X-UD3H LGA 1155 Intel z77 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

2x EVGA Nvidia GTX 560 SLI

Intel Core i7-3770x Ivy Bridge 3.5 GHz (3.9GHz Turbo) LGA 1155 77W Quad-Core Desktop Processor

3x Western Digital VelociRaptor WD6000HLHX 600GB 10000 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive

G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 2133 (PC3 17000) Desktop Memory

CoolerMaster Silent Pro M2 1500 Watt Modular Power Supply.

 

Again let me state, the results I got were not obtained using a load tester or any other special equipment.

To test this power supply I used 3 Western Digital Raptor 10,000 RPM hard drives in a RAID 5 configuration as well as two EVGA GTX 560s in SLI. While it may not of helped too much I set all the fans on high. I used the OCCT Power supply test for 1 hour.

12v Rail Results		5v Results
3.3v Results		VCore Results

Conclusion

Looking at the graphs above you can see that the power supply passed the tests. Never during my testing did the 12v rail ever drop under 12v. When placing a load on a power supply, you should see a slight voltage drop. OCCT detected a .05 drop in voltage on the 12 volt rail. The 5v line dropped to around 4.55 volts and OCCT reported 2.7 volts on the 3.3v line. Again take the results we attained with a grain of salt we are using the motherboard sensors to take voltage readings. The VCore readings fluctuated between 1.40v and just over 1.42v.

So really what does it all mean. Well, it means that this power supply should run your components with out any issues. I don't feel that even with a few more hard drives and running quad GPUs I could even come close to loading this power supply up. 1500 watts is a lot of power. I feel that Cooler Master has built a very solid power supply that will be the flagship of the Silent Pro M2 series. During testing I didn't run into any issues. The install went smoothly. The nylon mesh cables helped keep the leads nice and tidy inside the case and helped drastically with cable management. The flat modular connectors are a welcome site for me as I was able to route them pretty much any where I pleased.

 

Some pros we found:

1500 watts of power
Modular Cables
Flat cable design