Product Reviews

Cooler Master isn't necessarily the most original manufacturer, but it does have a knack for taking the latest trends and turning them into polished products. With its new power supply, it's taken on designs by the likes of FSP and GlobalWIN, the most obvious sign being the single cooling fan drawing air in and over the components. This is opposed to the more usual dual-fan approach with one pulling air in and one pushing it out the back.

The fan in question is a large one - 120mm in diameter and occupying most of the underside of the casing. Cooler Master has also gone for the design trend of the moment in the form of a honeycomb rear plate, allowing more air to escape and preventing positive pressure build up in the casing, which in turn improves airflow.

In fact, it all looks uncannily similar to FSP's Aurora PSU, even down to the blue LED that illuminates the fan. But one thing the Cooler Master lacks is the control to increase fan speed; its control is entirely automatic according to power load.

Anyone who's ever had to unplug a standard Molex power connector will appreciate the RS-450's modified plugs. The horrible feeling of being unable to get one to budge, and terrified that when it does come free you'll be unable to stop yourself punching a fist through your casing, is considerably reduced. With the redesigned connector, you just squeeze the bulging side tabs and it's safely levered out; it still needs a bit of wiggling, but without the usual attendant yelps of pain and frustration.

The

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power loom is good and long, with plenty of connectors: there are seven full-size Molex-style; two small floppy-disk connectors; and two of the new SATA plugs. However, the latter are both on the same length of cable, so your SATA drives will need to be within about 10cm of each other to use them without extensions. The main motherboard power connector is the newer 24-pin ATX version 2 variant, as sported by most new Intel 925X and 915 Express chipset-equipped motherboards. The majority with standard 20-pin connectors are catered for with a 20-pin adaptor cable.

But the really novel thing about the Real Power unit is its power consumption meter. This fits into a spare 3.5in floppy bay - there's no adaptor to put it into a 5.25in bay, which is a shame - and has an indicator similar to an old-style analog hi-fi VU meter, reading up to 600W output. What's the point of this? Well, for most people, there's no point at all, but for anyone concerned with the environment, the electricity bill or worried about overloading their machine it's a definite bonus.

It's not immediately obvious how much power consumption can vary according to the programs you have running and what you're doing with your machine. But sit and watch the meter as you load up Far Cry and you'll be amazed: in our test rig loaded with a 3.6GHz Model 560 Pentium 4 and nVidia 6800 Ultra graphics, the difference in load between idling and full CPU and graphics occupancy was 80W, consumption leaping from around 150W up to 230W. But it was reassuring to see that there was plenty of power headroom spare, and if you're worried about overloading your monster rig with eight 10,000rpm drives the little needle will be able to allay your fears and let you know if you're on the verge of overcooking it. And with a bit of rudimentary maths you can even calculate how much your machine is costing you in electricity.

There's nothing much we can criticise about the Real Power 450; it looks great, it's quiet and it has more features than you'd think were possible for a humble power supply. All of which add up to a Most Wanted award.