Cooler Master also included a wattage meter that can be installed into an available 3.5" bay. If you don't have a bay available the wiring for it is long enough to route it outside the case and placed on top. The meter is an analog gauge and can tell you how much power your system is using at a glance. The gauge goes up in increments of 10 from 0 to 80 and you simply multiply whatever number the needle is at by 10 to get your power consumption figure. At the time of this writing with F@H running in the background the needle is hovering between 20 and 30, so that gives us a power usage of 250W.

One drawback of the meter, due to its size it is VERY hard to read. If you keep your PC on the floor like I do, that adds to the difficulty of reading the meter. I feel a digital meter would have been a better choice as it would be much easier to read, and could possibly include other functions like monitoring individual rails.

Test System:

ASUS P5GD1-VM, Intel P4 CPU 3.40GHz (LGA775), 2 x 512 MB Corsair PC3200 XL, MSI X600XT PCI-E, 2 x WD 74GB SATA Raptors, 2 x Maxtor 60GB IDE, Lite On DVD ROM, Lite On DVD burner and just for good measure 2 12" CCFL's, 2 laser LED's as well as 6 80mm LED fans and a 92mm Panaflo fan on the heatsink. The case is an aluminum Aspire X-Alien. No fan controllers were in use so all fans were running full steam ahead.

Voltage output was recorded with a digital multimeter at 5 different points: boot, Windows start up (when loading screen appears), Idle, Load and shut down. To achieve a full load on the system Folding @ Home and Prime95 were run while converting a couple of home movies to DVD format. Testing at 5 different points should give a better Idea of the stability of this power supply since most fluctuations would occur when switching between different states.

The first graph shows the 12V rail, looking at the graph alone it appears to fluctuate pretty drastically, but that is only because the range shown in the graph is so small. According to the numbers the 12V rail is VERY stable in all states. The maximum recommended voltage for the 12V rail is 12.6 with the minimum being 11.4. The Real Power 550 stays well within the maximum/minimum recommendations and is very consistent and stable with a fluctuation on .09V

For the 5V rail we see much of the same thing, well within the recommended 4.75/5.25 range, and only showing a fluctuation of .04V between the different states of use.

The 3.3V rail never moved from 3.3V I ran the test over and over, reseating the probes each time just in case I had something wrong.

As you can see from the numbers above The Real Power 550 puts on an impressive show, especially for a power supply from a company that is relatively new to the PSU market.

Final Thoughts

In a time when PC components are becoming more and more power hungry almost by the day, the importance of a good stable power supply is more evident now than it ever has been. Cooler Master hasn't built a good power supply, they have built a GREAT power supply. Cooler Master has gone the extra mile to "future proof" the Real Power 550 as evident by the choice of connectors like SATA (which has all but replaced IDE in the enthusiast market) and a dedicated PCI-E connector for today's power hungry video cards.

There were only two items I felt Cooler Master dropped the ball on, neither of which affect the Real Powers performance. One is the lack of sleeved wires, Cooler Master has always given me the impression that they understand that not only do today's enthusiast wants peak performance, they want it to look great to. The second is the analog meter, any my only complaint with that is it is to hard to read. If Cooler Master is open to suggestions, I feel that a digital meter would be MUCH easier to read and could possibly have multiple settings for monitoring different rails.

What it all boils down to is performance, does it do what it is supposed to do, when it is supposed to and does it do it well? In the case of the Real Power 550 the answer to all of these is a very loud yes.

Pros: Three 12V rails, Stability across the board, Quiet, Performance.

Cons: Wattage meter is difficult to read, wires not sleeved.

Bottom Line: Aside from my personal preferences about the meter and the lack of sleeving, there is nothing I can find wrong with the Real Power 550. Rock solid performance all wrapped up in a nice quiet package, what more can you ask for?

If you have any comments, be sure to hit us up in our forums.

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