High Performance Gaming on a Budget: Building a Value PC with Cooler Master’s Silent Pro 600 M

The Test

Test Configuration – AMD Hardware

• Phenom II 720 at 3.486 GHz
• Gigabyte GA-MA790X-UD4P (latest BIOS, PCIe 2.0 specification; CrossFire 8x+8x).
• 4 GB OCZ Fatal1ty DDR2-PC8500 RAM (2×2 GB, dual-channel at PC 8500 speeds)
• ATi Radeon HD 4870-X2 (2GB, reference clocks 750/900) by VisionTek
• ATi Radeon HD 4870 (1GB, reference clocks 750/900) by ASUS
• Nvidia GeForce GTX280 (1GB, reference clocks) by BFG Tech
• Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX (896 MB, reference clocks)
• Onboard Realtek Audio
• 250 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 hard drive

• Cooler Master Silent Power 600 M, 600 watt power supply

Test Configuration – Software

• ATi Catalyst 9-6; highest quality mip-mapping set in the driver, Catalyst AI set to “Standard”

• GeForce 186.18; high quality filtering; optimizations off and LOD clamp enabled
• Windows Vista 64-bit SP1; very latest updates
• DirectX March 2008.
• All games are patched to their latest versions.
• Highest quality sound (stereo) used in all games.
• Vista 64, all DX10 titles were run under DX10 render paths

First we start with a GTX 280 plus a 8800 GTX in a PhysX configuration from our last test attempting to overheat Gladiator 600 case.  This would be a normal load for a 600 W PSU:

Here is a reading off the 5V rail from Kill-a-Watt and our digital multimeter:

As you can see, it is rock solid and there is plenty of room for more wattage draw.  The Cooler Master Silent Power Pro 600 M can clearly handle two demanding video cards in SLi or CrossFire.  But what if we push it further?  What if we use our HD 4870-X2 and our HD4870/1GB in Tri-Fire-X3?  As you can see from the following screen image, we did just that.

Big surprise! Our Silent Pro 600 M can handle HD 4870-X3 Tri-Fire!  Under extreme load, the system pulled over 560W continuously right on up to blipping just over 600w at its peak and our Silent Pro 600 M PSU did not shut down or become unstable – our Phenom II 720 X3 overclocked to 3.5GHz remained 100% stable.

Considering that the temperature in the test room was a constant 76F during the testing and the Silent Pro PSU is rated for 85% efficiency at 600W at a much colder temp; and the PSU did not shut down or become unstable, one would say that it acts more like a decent 700W PSU. Cooler Master has become very conservative in its ratings.

Here are the standards:
3.3V, 3.125 to 3.465 
5V, 4.75 to 5.25
12V, 11.4 to 12.6

Here are a few shots of my digital multimeter and Kill-a-Watt together measuring each rail – these are the most extreme variances that I could find and they are well within specifications.  Here is the 3.3V rail:

Now the 5V rail:

. . . and finally the 12V rail:

The 3.3v rail was dead on most of the time.  Plus or minus .1V and no other variance at any wattage that we could give it.
The 5V rail was very close – 4.97 to 5.09V
The 12v rail measured from 11.68 to 12V

And here is the result running 3DMark06 with Phenom II 720 at 3.5 GHz and HD 4870-X3 TriFire:

Amazingly we see our Silent Power 600 M acting much more like a conservatively rated 700W PSU instead of the 600W it is rated at.  Very impressive! So let’s take it apart to perhaps see why.