Cooler Master Real Power 450W PSU

Power Supplies by jmke @ 2004-07-26

Cooler Master making power supplies? We put their newest 450W creation through a series of tests on our fully equipped torture bench, does the Real Power survive? Read on to find out!

Introduction

Yes you are reading this correctly, we are reviewing a brand new power supply, from Cooler Master. This company is no stranger to the hardware world; they have a great variety of products, going from high quality cases, to CPU cooling and flashy modding gear.

Competition is tough between power supply manufactures as they are all striving to earn the “hardware enthusiast’s favorite”- title. In order to stand out you need to offer great specifications, steady volt rails, good AND silent cooling, future proof and have good durability. And all this must not come at an unreasonable price.

So here’s the Real Power 450W from Cooler Master:

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The unit is painted completely black which fits perfectly with about 99% of all cases out there, it features 1 big 120mm at the bottom, a very open “honey comb” area at the back and it comes with a nifty extra in the form of a real time Wattage meter.

Madshrimps (c)

Madshrimps (c)

Madshrimps (c)

Madshrimps (c)


The finger guard on the 120mm fan is sunk into the PSU, making installation very easy, speaking of easy, each of the 7 peripheral connectors come with a fast-removable mechanism! Another specialty is the addition of a 24-pin motherboard connector, it’s part of its ATX 2.0 compliancy. For those using an older motherboard you are forced to use this converter:

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A quick look at all the connectors:

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The display interface connects to the small breakout box of course, this gadget shows the current load on the power supply and you will see it fluctuate quite bit if you are doing intensive tasks on your PC. Do note that you need to sit right in front of the unit in order to read the correct values, as the small pointer shows incorrect ones when viewed at an angle.

Let’s take a look at the internals of the unit and see how its specifications stack up against popular brands ->

Inside & Specs

Opening up the Real Power shows 2 aluminum heatsinks which are effectively cooled by the big 120mm Cooler Master fan sitting right on top.

Madshrimps (c)

Madshrimps (c)

Madshrimps (c)


The inside is neatly organized which helps cooling a lot, the fan will operate at ~1200rpm most of the time, but if the PSU reaches 50% load then the fan’s speed will gradually creep upwards until it reaches ~2400rpm at 100%. Only when I put my ear right next to the fan I could hear the air moving through its blades; this PSU is very silent and rated near 20dBA.

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Enough with the chit-chat, here are some raw numbers:

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Enough juice to power almost any system, and compared to the other players in this business the Real Power stands its ground



You notice that the Peak Power of all the others is considerably higher, however, this high output can only be maintained for a short period of time by the power supply, and thus it doesn’t translate into real world 24/7 usable power. Cooler Master chose to display the actual “Real Power” its unit can deliver, a risky decision but I applaud it. Too many highly rated poor performing power supplies are out there!

For more specifics on the Real Power 450W I highly suggest you take a look at their very detailed product sheet. Here’s a small summary of the things I found particularly interesting and useful for our readers:

Input Current 8A @ 115Vac / 4A @ 230Vac
Efficiency > 75% Typically
Output Capacity 450W Continually
Opertaion Temp 0-40°C
MTBF > 400,000 Hours
Dimension Standard ATX 150 x 140 x 86 (mm)
Cable Length 24 pin Motherboard Connector 600 mm
ATX 12V Connector 600 mm
4 pin Peripheral Connector 600mm
SATA Connector 600mm + 200 mm
Display Interface Connector 800 mm
4 pin Floppy Connector 150mm


Time for some testing I’d say ->

Install & Testing

Well this is the page most of you have come for. In order to test the Real Power I put together the following configuration with parts I had lying around:

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  • CPU: P4 2.4Ghz “C”
  • Cooling: Swiftech MCX478-V + Papst 92mm
  • Motherboard: Asus P4C800
  • RAM: 1GB PC3200 Corsair PRO series
  • Video: Chaintech FX5900XT
  • Storage: 2x IDE Hard drives
  • Extra’s: Promise FastTrack SX150 with 32Mb SDRAM

    After hooking everything up I pushed the power button (or in this case, short circuit the correct pins on the motherboard with a screwdriver), lights out… and action!

    Madshrimps (c)


    The fan is actually a LED-fan it lights up quite strongly, no need for a CCFL in your case anymore. The small Wattage meter which fits into a floppy drive bay also lights up in a lovely blue color:

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    Using this nifty and fascinating device I started taking down values to see how high I could push the needle.

    With the system running at default speeds I got the following max. values:

    Boot: Booting of Windows XP
    Idle: Doing nothing but staring at a passive desktop
    Load: running 2 instances of K7 CPU burn and looping the game tests of 3DMark2001SE

    So off we go ->

  • boot: 130W
  • idle: 100W
  • load: 190W

    Not bad… but I want more, so I overclocked the CPU to 3ghz using 1.65v vcore

  • boot: 140W
  • idle: 100W
  • load: 210W

    In order to stress the PSU more I decided to add a few peripherals:

    Madshrimps (c)


    This was added:
  • 6x IDE drives (5x 7200rpm + 1x 5400rpm)
  • 3x CD-Rom/CDr
  • PCI ATA66 Adapter
  • 1x 80mm Fan (that tower of HDD’s runs very hot)
  • 2x ACRyan CCFL’s

    I pushed the CPU a bit further to 3125Mhz using 1.7v vcore and got these results:

  • boot: 200W
  • idle: 130W
  • load: 260W

    While this is some good fun to try and see how much hardware you can hook up one PC, in the end it will all be a “moo point” if the PSU can not “hold its rails” and give your system total stability.

    So using the latest configuration I started 3 different test scenarios:

    1) idle at the desktop in XP
    2) running 1 instance of CPUburn + defrag on all the hard drives simultaneously (thank you O&O Defrag)
    3) running 2 instances of CPUburn + Looping 3Dmark2001SE

    Here are the results:

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    All the rails are WELL within specification even with that much hardware hooked up to an overclocked P4 system, very impressive to say the least.

    Onto our conclusion on the next page ->

    • Conclusion

    Cooler Master pulled a rabbit out of their hat with their first power supply. The Real Power offers the enthusiast a high end solution for their power problems. During extreme testing the system refused to reboot or reset even when I hooked up over 10 storage devices and taxed the PSU none-stop.

    Although it’s a quite popular nowadays to feature adjustable voltage rails on your PSU it seems the Real Power simply does not need it. All the rails remain well within specifications even when overclocking your processor to gain extra performance.

    It has great looks, innovative features and it’s whisper quiet, what more can you ask for? A reasonable pricing scheme of course! I’ve read that this baby can be yours for about €100 and less, which makes it very interesting if you are looking for an upgrade.

    Madshrimps (c)
    Click the picture to visit the Cooler Master website for more details on pricing and where to buy their products


    They don’t know how right they are, full range features on the Real Power make it winner in my book!

    Thank you for reading and thank you Joost from Cooler Master for setting us up with review unit.

    Questions/Comments? forum thread
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