Power Efficiency
Power Efficiency
A rather big deal about the Silent Pro GOLD power supplies is that they carry a 80+ gold certification, which relates to the currently greatest achievable power efficiency.
High efficiency is good -- low efficiency is bad -- as simple as that. When power is drawn from your wall socket and travels into your power supply, not all of it is transformed into electricity that your computer consumes. A rather large part of that current will get lost as heat that is dissipating in the capacitors, or as leakage in circuits and other insufficiencies.
That inefficiency drives up power consumption. Say; if your computer (inner parts) typically requires 350 Watts of power, a power supply will draw more than 350W from your wall socket. Here's an example:
We can make a formula here. If you have a very half assed generic power supply with an average 70% efficiency, a 350W power draw inside the PC (350/70x100) load would mean it is drawing 500 Watts (!) of power from your wall socket. Interesting eh?
Let's do that math again with the Silent Pro GOLD , yet this time with a 90% power efficiency (80+ Gold certification) in mind: 350/90x100= 389 Watts. So we just saved 111 Watts over a 70% efficient product. If you have your PC powered on a lot, think about this theory and what it can save you in the long term. The higher the efficiency of your power supply, the less power leaks, the less money you have to pay. And it's good for mother nature as well.
So the Silent Pro GOLD series power supply has the best rated '80 Plus Gold' certification and that means roughly an efficiency of 90% minimum at typical load (350W in the case of the reviewed 600W model) and 87% at light (140W in the case of the reviewed 600W model).
This PSU therefore comes with an efficiency in-between 88%~92%
So how does the Silent Pro GOLD series achieve that maximum efficiency? Let's have a look at some of Cooler Masters marketing:
Innovative and Patented TechnologiesThe Silent Pro Gold series features an entirely new design with several innovative and patented technologies. Cooler Master has created HTT (Heat Transfer Technology), a unique L-shaped heat-sink designed to vastly improve the airflow inside the power supply, resulting in lower operating temperatures. Another unique feature to the Silent Pro Gold series is the Hybrid Transformer which mounts the transformer directly to the heatsink. This makes for a more compact transformer and improves the power efficiency at the same time.
Yet another feature that helps improve the power efficiency is Hyper Path which is a hyper link between the transformer and the various power conversion components. The hyper link results in almost a loss-less transfer of energy which has never been done before. Combine all three of these features and you got one of the most quiet and power efficient power supplies in its category. The entire range offers a power efficiency that exceeds 90 percent at 220V, starting from a load of about 50 percent (model dependant), with some models never dropping below 90 percent. During normal use (up to about 50 percent load), neither model exceeds 21 dBA of fan noise thanks to the low RPM fan design combined with the new heat-sink design.
Power efficiency and noise aside, the Silent Pro Gold series offers a wide range of cutting edge features. You will of course get modular cables and as with other high-end power supplies from Cooler Master and the Silent Pro Gold series is supplied with flat cables which allows for a much tidier build. Some models also features a cable protector for the main ATX power cable on the PSU end which reduces wear and tear where this large cable enters the PSU chassis.
Warranty
You'll notice it straight from looking at the box if you purchase it, the PSU has a 5 year warranty, which is really good.
