Cooler Master are well known for their cases and
cooling accessories, and over the past couple years, their power
supplies are popular products in their portfolio. Cooler Master
does bundle some of their PSUs in many of their entry level cases,
but their premium PSUs are typically sold as standalone products.
Such is the case with the Cooler
Master iGreen Power 600W. The problem with many power supplies
these days is that while they can draw a lot of power, a good
deal of it ends up being wasted and the end result is more heat
and wasted energy. Many PSUs from all manufacturers suffer from
this, and the iGreen Power sets out to address this issue in Cooler
Master's product lineup.
Specifications
| Type
|
ATX
Form Factor 12V V2.2 / SSI standard EPS 12V V2.91 |
| Input
Voltage |
90
~ 264V (Auto Range) |
| Input
Current |
10A
@ 115Vac / 5A @ 230Vac |
| Input
Frequency Range |
47~63
Hz |
| Power
Good Signal |
100
~ 500 ms |
| Hold
Up Time |
>
17ms |
| Efficiency
|
82%
(120W) / 85% (300W) / 82% (600W) |
| Output
Capacity |
600
Watts Continuous |
| MTBF
|
>
400,000 Hours |
| Dimension
|
Standard
ATX 150 x 140 x 86 (mm) |
Like many power supplies, at least those that
are of good quality, that has passed through our labs, the iGreen
Power is quite heavy. While the PSU rule of weight does not always
hold true, the general consensus is that the heavier it is, the
better quality it is.
Everything is neatly packaged in egg carton cardboard.
Inside, we have the iGreen Power 600W PSU, a power cable, manual,
and installation screws. Except for the manual and power connections,
everything is tightly wrapped in a plastic bag.
The iGreen Power is an ATX power supply. The dimensions
are within ATX specifications and the PSU measures 150 mm x 140
mm x 86 mm. The drive is not modular, so everything you need is
already pre-wired to the PSU. There is a specifications sticker
on the left side (when facing the PSU from where the cables exit)
of the PSU.
At first glance, we can see that a total of 166W
is provided on the +3.3v and +5v rails, 456W on the +12v rail,
6W on the negative rails, and 15W on the +5v rail (for USB) giving
us 643W total. The iGreen Power is rated for a maximum of 700W
but allows for 600W continuous. The iGreen Power also has triple
+12v rails (peaks of 16A, 14A and 8A respectively). Additional
rails will aid in keeping a system stable as you can separate
devices based on power consumption into the rails of your choosing.
This is extremely important these days with water cooling, and
multiple video card setups.
Cracking the unit open reveals a large number
of heatsinks and PSU circuitry. The iGreen Power PSU features
protection for Over-Temperature, Over-Voltage, Under-Voltage,
Over-Current, Short Circuit Protection, and Over-Loading. If such
an event occurs, the Power Failure Detector on the rear of the
PSU will light up to indicate a failure.
Both SLI and CrossFire are fully supported and
the iGreen does meet NVIDIA's requirement for SLI certification.
In addition to SLI certification, the iGreen meet's Intel's ATX12V
v2.2 specifications, as well as Energy Star and Blue Angel requirements.
The latter specifications plays a part in the whole green
in iGreen.
Through Double Forward Switching Circuit Technology,
Cooler Master is able to achieve 85% power efficiency. In layman's
terms, this means for every 10W of power drawn, 8.5W is converted
into usable power for the PC. Compare this to the Cooler Master
Real Power 550, the iGreen Power is 10% more efficient. Cooler
Master touts the iGreen as the first PSU with 85% power efficiency,
which is true for a 600W power supply.
Cooling is provided by a Protechnic Electric MGA12012HB-025
120mm fan controlled by an internal fan speed controller. The
fan is rated at a maximum of 2500rpm at 100% load and with a noise
rating of 38dBA and 17dBA at low speed settings. The high speed
noise is a bit louder than some of the previous Cooler Master
PSUs we've worked with in the past, but still below the noise
output of typical CPU heatsinks.
Since the iGreen uses a larger 120mm fan, Cooler
Master chose the"Honey Comb" structure
for the rear of the unit. The perforations allows a fair amount
of air to be exhausted (via the 120mm fan) and is less obstructive
than traditional precut grill methods. No voltage switch is present
as the PSU auto regulates the power. Just above the power switch
is the indicator light mentioned earlier to warn the user of errors
in the voltage.
The shell of the iGreen PSU is highly reflective,
and will look quite nice for those of you with case windows. You
can see in the top left image that Cooler Master uses a zip tie
to secure the cables coming out of the case. We would like to
have seen some sort of ring core to shield the cables and internal
components from EMI, and hopefully we'll see such a feature in
the future.
All of the cables are covered in a braided sheath
which serves to hide the mostly unattractive multicolored wiring.
All the cables are very long and we had no problems running them
through our Koolance PC3-720SL. For your connections, you have
the following: one 20+4 pin motherboard connection, a 4 pin +12v
CPU connection, an 8 pin +12V CPU connection, two PCI-E connections,
six SATA, five Molex, and one floppy connection. Each Molex connection
have push tabs that make removal easier when you're swapping devices.
Testing
MSI P4N Diamond: Intel Pentium 4 560, 2GB Corsair
DDR2 8000UL, 2 x Seagate 400GB, Seagate 120GB, 2 x MSI 7800GTX,
MSI 16X DL, AOpen CDRW 52X, Koolance PC3-720SL.
To load up the system, we run Prime95 run for
60 minutes, with Folding @ Home running in the background, as
well as ripping a War of the Worlds DVD to the Seagate RAID
setup. We also ran a continuous loop of VirusScan and a looping
demo of 3DMark05. Voltages were monitored with ABRA DM-9700
multimeter. The comparison PSUs are the Enermax
EG701AX, Enermax Liberty EL620AWT
and Cooler Master's RealPower 450W. The P4 560 will be clocked
at 18x215 for all testing. All the power supplies were plugged
into a Belkin UPS (separately for each test) for the first set
of tests.
Temperatures
Most PSUs have an ideal operating temperature
of about 40°C, so we turned up the thermostat to 30°C
(max in our house), disabled the case fans and set the Koolance
liquid cooler to a low enough fan setting to keep the system
stable at 3.87GHz. According to MBM, the internal case temperature
got to about ~50°C, and a thermal probe attached a heatsink
inside the PSUs read 56°C for the Enermax EG701AX,
54°C for the Liberty EL620AWT, 53°C on the Cooler Master
Real Power 450 and 45°C for the iGreen Power. As
we'll soon see with the load testing, the iGreen isn't wasting
as much power as the other PSUs and the end result is a cooler
running unit.
Idle
|
+3.3v
|
+5v
|
+12v
|
| CM iGreen Power |
3.28
|
5.02
|
12.09
|
| Enermax EL620 |
3.30
|
5.11
|
12.06
|
| Enermax EG701AX |
3.30
|
5.08
|
12.07
|
| CM
RealPower |
3.26
|
5.01
|
12.01
|
Load
|
+3.3v
|
+5v
|
+12v
|
| CM iGreen Power |
3.27
|
5.00
|
12.03
|
| Enermax EL620 |
3.29
|
5.05
|
12.02
|
| Enermax EG701AX |
3.27
|
5.02
|
11.98
|
| CM
RealPower |
3.26
|
5.00
|
11.96
|
While the Belkin regulated the power drawn from
the wall outlet, you'll still need a decent PSU to provide clean
and reliable power to your PC. The iGreen compares well with
the Enermax PSUs and improves upon the Real Power's results.
Wall Socket Test
Living in a new home, most of our wires are in
pretty good shape. I did want to see how the PSUs would react
plugged into a wall socket though (no power bar or UPS) and
the other socket with a second PC equipped with a 21" CRT
drawing power from a power bar. I managed to pack two additional
17" monitors to the power bar, as well as a 4.1 Logitech
speaker set. I turned on a second 19" monitor plugged into
another socket which shares the wiring circuit and ended with
these results.
Load
|
+3.3v
|
+5v
|
+12v
|
| CM iGreen Power |
3.23
|
4.99
|
11.97
|
| Enermax EL620 |
3.25
|
5.02
|
12.00
|
| Enermax EG701AX |
3.24
|
5.01
|
11.94
|
| CM
RealPower |
3.21
|
4.98
|
11.90
|
All the PSUs lost a bit of power, but not enough
to cause any problems at all. The Enermax Liberty still holds
up a little better but none of the units suffered any instability.
Final
Words
Overall the Cooler Master iGreen Power 600W was a very solid
power supply in all of our tests. The +5v was a little low compared
to the competition, but the +12v rails were right up there. The
Enermax PSUs had the better numbers for the most part but neither
of them beat the iGreen by a wide enough of a margin for us to
call it deal breakers. Despite the 2nd to 3rd place finish, the
iGreen has plenty of appeal, especially for those of you who pay
for your own energy bills.
There's too many variables in my home to gauge whether or not
the iGreen will save me a lot of money, but certainly the iGreen
seems to waste less energy given the cooler running temperatures
than our comparison units. Despite it not being "cool"
for enthusiasts to admit, less waste is better for the environment.
I've spoken with another webmaster who mentioned that he's planning
to equip all the PCs in his environment with high efficiency PSUs
for the power savings and long term friendliness for Mother Nature.
That said, the iGreen is not about tree hugging only as the power
provided for your computer is plentiful and reliable. Along with
the increased efficiency, everything else we've come to expect
from performance power supplies are present, such as SLI and CrossFire
support, plenty of connections and good build quality.
Hit
us up in the Forums
if you have any questions.
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