power supplies
Coolermaster Silent Pro M 700 - MeetTheGeeks.org
Incidentally, if you want the recipe for my well know wake up juice also called coffee with a heart murmur I’ll tell you what it is. A pint mug. Yes a mug. I have a coffee mug that holds a pint. Take one of these mugs, add to it four triple espresso coffees, and top it up with a little milk, a little sugar to give you some chance of getting it down, and then fill that whole pint mug up to the top with the finest filter coffee set to maximum strength. I have no problem drinking this, I don’t mind the way everything afterwards becomes a blur. The only problem I have is the caffeine withdrawal come down the day after.
If you want some idea of what that is like, have you even seen a rabbit on the side of the road after a few trucks have hit it? Well that will feel better than you after a pint of that and 24 hours.
Well Coolermasters Silent Pro M700 arrived in its new style box and its actually really eye catching. Theres a clam style opening where the top of the split box opens outwards, leaving you looking into the heart of the box. You also get that well known smell of silicon waiting to be used. The first thing you see is the packaging foam, a CD with manual, other oddities, and your impressive 5 year warranty and the rest all underneath that. Once you peel that layer back you are left with the rather compact PSU and the cables. Now these cables are the flat unbraided kind. Coolermaster say its for better airflow in a silent system. I don’t lean towards that theory. I think it would be better if they were braided showing the same standard of finish we are accustomed too. From my use of PSUs in the numerous years I have been building I still find the round braided cables give better airflow and are far easier to keep tidy. They also are more pleasing to the eye on modded cases.
The main PSU itself is housing a large fan grill on its base allowing very clear lines for airflow and a 135mm black fan hiding beneath that. Its all very open, and its all clean with no large components to interfere with the cooling side of this. Being a fan that is low on RPM to keep the noise down, I assume thermally controlled for minimal overall noise, coupled with a silicone style grommet so that when its placed against the case and screwed on, it cannot vibrate. Now there is a lot of care in this to keep it silent in all aspects. Also there is its efficiency. Once you see how its assembled using Copper and Aluminium heatsinks for maximum cooling with minimal airflow you can gauge exactly how silent this PSU is trying to be.
Now you get all the regular connectors so I don’t need to list them here. Combined with its SLi / 80 Plus rating and a peak output of 840watts, 85% overall efficiency, multiple protection systems and simple clean black colour make it at the forefront of its game. This is the way technology is going with components such as these for newer demanding computers.
The only test bed free at the time for testing this new unit was the beast of a server we have here. To give it a fair trial we had to swap all the fans over for silent ones to compare it on a like for like basis on audio with a regular mainstream PSU.
At 1AM. Wired on caffeine. Where everything is funny at this point.
So with all of the system fans replaced with NoiseBlocker versions for total silence, the heatsink and fan replaced also for a silent one we can test the existing standard PSU with the new one. Now the system was a little warm anyway so the PSU that was in it was working as per normal. But we ran it for an hour to let the temperature stabilise while we tried to find batteries for the DB meter. (Some one had left it on the last time it was used) Only we could not find any at half one in the morning so were sadly unable to take those results. But you can compare it to an electric rotary head razor level of noise. So with the new Coolermaster Silent Pro in place, combined with the silent cooling systems added, there was barely a low white noise level of hum. It really was that low of a noise produced. I did notice that when you first turn the system on the fan kicks in to a high speed and after a moment or two it really just settles down to next to nothing. I checked to see if the fan was spinning and it was but barely moving at all. The laser thermometer showed a temperature of 19 degrees on the parts we could get it into. So we simply turned off all the chassis fans leaving only the main CPU fan and the PSU fan working. This was left at moderate load to build some heat up and see what the fan would do to compensate. It appeared to have increased the speed as noted by a small white fleck I added to the fan blade as a visual indicator. The temperature of the internals of the PSU had stepped up also showing that it is regulating itself happily and showing temperatures of 26 degrees. Remember this is rather early in the morning at this point and its getting light out so its naturally cooler anyway.
The actual voltages from the PSU were well within all tolerances and any new additional loads were compensated for rapidly. There was no fleeting of the voltages, they sat constant like lighthouse rocks. The scope showed a very impressive almost flat line so the regulation system is impeccable.
All in all, I am actually rather impressed. The PSU being silent was not hot like we had expected, even the rear exhaust was a good temperature. This is due partly to the internal design being very open and flat. I can honestly say that Im not a fan of silent power supplies or totally silent systems but this one performed far greater than I had anticipated and also gave me enough confidence to leave it in the server after testing. Really it made that much of an impression on me.
I should state that the newer range that we have seen come from Coolermaster on the power supplies is really impressive, and coupled with the silent cooling options this one now offers there is a PSU from Coolermaster for everyone. No matter if you are the media junkie, high end gamer or music phreak. Whatever you do, there is a PSU to suit you. For those of you who like it silent but powerful, with all the trimmings to stop vibration and still keep it simple then you should certainly start by looking at this particular range as a starting point. I really do not have anything negative to say about it, and I cannot find anything to suggest that they could do to it that may make it better or improve upon it.
It was perfection right out of the box.
Read more: MeetTheGeeks.org
RATING Vote: 
3.0/5 (2 votes)KEYWORDS coolermaster,M700,silent,psu POSTED 19/06/08 10:16 TRUST 0
3.0/5 (2 votes)KEYWORDS coolermaster,M700,silent,psu POSTED 19/06/08 10:16 TRUST 0 