Cooler Master Silent Pro M1000 1000W
by Martin Kaffei on September 5, 2010 10:30 PM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- PSUs
- 80Plus
- Cooler Master
- Silent Pro
Conclusion
Cooler Master delivers a PSU that has appropriate features and worthy electronics for the intended market. The MSRP is moderately high at the moment, but online pricing is much better (see below). The cooling could be a lot quieter, especially considering the "Silent Pro" name, and the fan could be better as well, but most of the results in our load tests are decent.
The Silent Pro M1000 scores with its anti-vibration frames and an adequate number of PCIe connectors. A 5-year of warranty isn't out of the norm, especially because the product has to be registered online, but it's still better than some manufacturers. A lot depends on the quality of the service so the duration of warranty should not be the characteristic feature for purchase decisions.
The 60cm and 65cm lengths on the 24-pin and 4+4pin motherboard cables are very long, but we would have expected an additional 4-pin and 8-pin connector. Cooler Master strongly focuses on a high-end gaming PC with an 8-pin connector. But besides that there are motherboards and CPUs that need more than a single mainboard connector. In return, enough peripheral ports are present and the asynchronous array of SATA connectors considers a multitude of positions for hard drives and other peripherals. The floppy connector is realized by an adapter for those that still need such a device, which is a reasonable approach. The flat connection cables are beneficial as they are more flexible, but they offer no measurable advantage for airflow.
Inside the PSU the workmanship is satisfactory. Wherever needed, parts are insulated. The power supply is sensibly refined with a selected choice of components and only the PFC-choke could be affixed better. Otherwise the filtering stages are well equipped. This applies particularly to the capacitors as Cooler Master not only uses a good main capacitor, but good secondary ones as well. The manufacturer does not just look at details, but pays attention to the whole package. For example there are not only 105°C-capacitors used, but also with decent characteristics.
Nevertheless these are not the top-of-the-line components, which helps bring the price down to $164 online at the time of writing. Especially at low load the fan should be regulated in smaller steps, as the fan speed stays on the same level from 10% to 50% load. The sleeve bearing fan is a standard (i.e. mediocre) model, while most manufactures use their own specialized fans. Cooler Master surely could find a better fan from other suppliers.
Despite a few nitpicks, we can't criticize the measurement results. +5V ideally should not drop this far, but is still well within the range of the specification. In addition a modern system does not use the +5V rail to this extent and the drop was recorded at an overload situation. +3.3V drops no more than -1.5% and +12V is very constant as well. On the +12V rail the highest ripple spike was recorded, but overall the Silent Pro convinces. Even Enermax reaches nearly 60mV with their Pro/Modu87+, so the result is fine here. The competition is not that fierce in the matter of voltage quality. Especially at +3.3V and +5V single-digit or lower double-digit measurements are very hard to beat.
The efficiency (87 %) may not be the best, but is well within the promised level. Furthermore an efficiency of 82% at 10% load (scarcely 100w) is above the average level of previously tested power supplies. The power factor reaches 0.98 at 230VAC, which means minimal phase shifting. There isn't much missing to keep the M1000 from being the best ATX power supply in its price range, but unfortunately the PSU isn't very Silent (Pro).
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22 Comments
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pg55555 - Sunday, September 5, 2010 - link
Your main complain is noise, but your table indicates 20dB up to 50% load, 22dB at 80% and you complain because it becomes louder (35dB) when you overload??Form a table I got from other site:
TYPICAL SOUND LEVELS
Jet takeoff (200 feet) 120 dBA
Construction Site 110 dBA Intolerable
Shout (5 feet) 100 dBA
Heavy truck (50 feet) 90 dBA Very noisy
Urban street 80 dBA
Automobile interior 70 dBA Noisy
Normal conversation (3 feet) 60 dBA
Office, classroom 50 dBA Moderate
Living room 40 dBA
Bedroom at night 30 dBA Quiet
Broadcast studio 20 dBA
Rustling leaves 10 dBA Barely audible
So you are saying it is louder than expected because its sound level - up to more than 50% load (this is 500W what would require an i7 920 OC at 4.0 GZ with an HD5970) - is similar to a Broadcast studio?
cactusdog - Monday, September 6, 2010 - link
Its loud compared to the manufacturer's claim of silence. There are plenty of PSU's that are silent. They should have called it the "CoolerMaster Nearly Silent Pro"cactusdog - Monday, September 6, 2010 - link
My experience with fans is 20dB is just audible in a quiet room. 22dB(80% load) is clearly audible so it cant claim to be silent.7Enigma - Monday, September 6, 2010 - link
You also have to remember that different frequencies of sound are perceived differently to the human ear. There can be some very annoying quiet sounds (high frequency can be horrible), while some loud sounds (especially low frequency) can't even be perceived. Take your home theater sub; below about 15-20Hz can no longer be heard, but can be physically felt.When calibrating my SVS PV-10 with a single tone drop from 150-0Hz it got to a point where I heard nothing but the walls were shaking. Really creepy and cool at the same time. I'm kind of shocked more horror movies don't put some odd inaudible noises in just to make your house moan. :)
sonicology - Monday, September 6, 2010 - link
Another 1000W PSU is great for those running overclocked hex-core quad SLI set-ups, however what I would really like and what nobody seems to offer is an 80 Plus Gold or Platinum 300W PSU that runs near enough silent.I guess consumers only care about huge wattage ratings that they don't even come close to using whilst the quality low watt PSUs go to the large OEMs?
7Enigma - Monday, September 6, 2010 - link
You're just not going to find a 300w quality supply. 400-500 yes and that is where I normally shop, but everything does tend now to be above that range.And as for your second statement, quality OEM PSU's? Thanks for the laugh.....:)
Sabresiberian - Wednesday, September 8, 2010 - link
Actually, this PSU wouldn't work for hex-core quad SLI. Oh, there might be 4 SLI capable video cards that it could power, but I highly doubt it.There really is use for the high end PSUs. Consider the person who installs 2 Geforce 480s in SLI. That person needs 42A for each card for a total of 84A, which automatically makes this PSU unsuitable, because it is rated to supply a maximum of 80A @ 12V, and that's not including anything else that runs on 12V. A person considering 2 480s in SLI needs to consider a 1200W PSU, and needs to pay close attention to the rails on the one he/she buys, so that each the cards don't try to draw more power from a rail than it is rated to supply.
The fact is, Anandtech rates lower power PSUs on as regular a basis as much as they do the higher end units. True, I haven't seen them rate any 300W PSUs in quite awhile, but it takes very little these days to need more than that, considering modern CPUs and video cards (the CPU alone would take up 1/3 to 1/2 the power). Anandtech was started as and I think still is primarily a site for enthusiasts, and there aren't many people who are going to build with a 300W PSU.
Maybe there's some apps for them though; HTPC? Still, it seems to me that a suggestion could be made in a positive tone rather than one that bashes people for being interested in the high end market.
Consider too, that review sites often tell us about the products that manufacturers send them for evaluation, and manufacturers send flagship models. What the manufacturer tends to think is if you read a good review about their top end PSU, you'll buy a lower end unit thinking it's built with the same care. Unfortunately, that's often not the case, especially with PSUs, so your point is quite valid, they should be tested on their own.
r3quiem - Tuesday, December 20, 2011 - link
You clearly have no Idea what you are taking about in regards to the GTX 480's in SLI. The maximum powerdraw of a single GTX 480 is 250 watts / 12V rail = 21A not 42A. Now Two GTX 480's in SLI would use a Total Max of 42A there by saturating slightly more than 50% of the 12V Rail.Now if you look the CPU side even the power hungry Hexa Core i7-990X is rated at 130 Watt TDP. Doing some simple match 130W / 12V = 10.8 A.
So in total without overclocking we only just used up 63 A out of the available 80A leaving 17A more headroom to play around with overclocking as you need it. And that's only if everything is working at 100% load which isn't a likely scenario unless you are running multiple benchmarks at a time.
7Enigma - Monday, September 6, 2010 - link
Article seems a bit odd without any introduction, just jumping right into the contents of the product. Me thinks a page is missing!Martin Kaffei - Monday, September 6, 2010 - link
Sry, you're right. Fixed!I agree with cactusdog. Of course we have seen worse results. But in this case, the manufacturer is using the word "Silent" in his name. So it shouldn't be louder than the smaller Silent Pro, which are very quiet.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2613/8