Cooler Master Silent Pro M1000 1000W

Conclusion

Cooler Master delivers a PSU that has appropriate features and worthy electronics for the intended market. The MSRP is moderately high at the moment, but online pricing is much better (see below). The cooling could be a lot quieter, especially considering the "Silent Pro" name, and the fan could be better as well, but most of the results in our load tests are decent.

The Silent Pro M1000 scores with its anti-vibration frames and an adequate number of PCIe connectors. A 5-year of warranty isn't out of the norm, especially because the product has to be registered online, but it's still better than some manufacturers. A lot depends on the quality of the service so the duration of warranty should not be the characteristic feature for purchase decisions.

The 60cm and 65cm lengths on the 24-pin and 4+4pin motherboard cables are very long, but we would have expected an additional 4-pin and 8-pin connector. Cooler Master strongly focuses on a high-end gaming PC with an 8-pin connector. But besides that there are motherboards and CPUs that need more than a single mainboard connector. In return, enough peripheral ports are present and the asynchronous array of SATA connectors considers a multitude of positions for hard drives and other peripherals. The floppy connector is realized by an adapter for those that still need such a device, which is a reasonable approach. The flat connection cables are beneficial as they are more flexible, but they offer no measurable advantage for airflow.

Inside the PSU the workmanship is satisfactory. Wherever needed, parts are insulated. The power supply is sensibly refined with a selected choice of components and only the PFC-choke could be affixed better. Otherwise the filtering stages are well equipped. This applies particularly to the capacitors as Cooler Master not only uses a good main capacitor, but good secondary ones as well. The manufacturer does not just look at details, but pays attention to the whole package. For example there are not only 105°C-capacitors used, but also with decent characteristics.

Nevertheless these are not the top-of-the-line components, which helps bring the price down to $164 online at the time of writing. Especially at low load the fan should be regulated in smaller steps, as the fan speed stays on the same level from 10% to 50% load. The sleeve bearing fan is a standard (i.e. mediocre) model, while most manufactures use their own specialized fans. Cooler Master surely could find a better fan from other suppliers.

Despite a few nitpicks, we can't criticize the measurement results. +5V ideally should not drop this far, but is still well within the range of the specification. In addition a modern system does not use the +5V rail to this extent and the drop was recorded at an overload situation. +3.3V drops no more than -1.5% and +12V is very constant as well. On the +12V rail the highest ripple spike was recorded, but overall the Silent Pro convinces. Even Enermax reaches nearly 60mV with their Pro/Modu87+, so the result is fine here. The competition is not that fierce in the matter of voltage quality. Especially at +3.3V and +5V single-digit or lower double-digit measurements are very hard to beat.

The efficiency (87 %) may not be the best, but is well within the promised level. Furthermore an efficiency of 82% at 10% load (scarcely 100w) is above the average level of previously tested power supplies. The power factor reaches 0.98 at 230VAC, which means minimal phase shifting. There isn't much missing to keep the M1000 from being the best ATX power supply in its price range, but unfortunately the PSU isn't very Silent (Pro).