Cooler Master Silent Pro Gold 800 W Power Supply Review

Conclusions

Cooler Master Silent Pro Gold 800 W will come with a USD 180 suggested price tag, which is not bad for an 80 Plus Gold unit, especially because on-line stores usually sell units for less than the suggested price.

The problem is that we think Corsair HX850W is better than Cooler Master Silent Pro Gold 800 W and it costs less (USD 160). You see, Ecos Consulting, the company behind 80 Plus, gave Corsair HX850W their Gold certification, but Corsair decided to downgrade this unit to Silver because it couldn’t deliver 87% efficiency at full load at real-world temperatures. So according to Ecos Consulting  both units are “80 Plus Gold,” and thus we have a valid comparison.

Some small flaws we found in Cooler Master Silent Gold 800 W include:

• Although supporting three video cards that require two auxiliary power connector each, video card connectors share the same cable instead of using individual cables, a problem not found in Corsair HX850W.
• Corsair HX850W has 12 SATA power connectors and 12 peripheral power connectors. Cooler Master Silent Gold 800 W has nine and four, respectively.
• Presence of some Taiwanese capacitors on the modular cabling printed circuit board instead of having absolutely all capacitors made in Japan, a problem not found in Corsair HX850W, where absolutely all caps are Japanese.
• Noise level above specs at -12 V output. With Corsair HX850W this problem didn’t happen, however in our tests we found a high noise level at +5VSB output instead, but Corsair sent us their oscilloscope screenshots showing low noise level, and we had to assume that our equipment was misreading the results for some reason.
• Although inside specs, noise level at +12 V was higher than we’d like to see in a high-end product.
• You get 50 W more labeled power by buying this unit from Corsair.

This new 800 W power supply from Cooler Master can be an option – the price is right, in our opinion, and in fact this unit presents a better cost/benefit ratio than OCZ Z-Series 850 W (which is also 80 Plus Gold), for example. But the savvy user who understands that the 80 Plus certification is many times only a marketing badge and does not represent the real-world performance of a power supply will probably save money and make a better choice by picking the Corsair HX850W.