The technical data …
The CM V550S weight is about 1.52 kg (approx. 2.1kg shipping weight) and has a small overall size of approx. 140x150x85mm.
The technical data of the 550 watt power supply can be checked at any time on the attached label. The Coolermaster 550 RS550 AMAAG1 provides following voltage levels and amperages: +3.3V 20A, +5V 20A, +12V 45A, 12V 0.3A and +5VSB 2.5A.
The combined total output values should not exceed the following ratings:
At +3.3V and +5.0V up to 100 Watt, +12V up to 540 Watt and total consumption of all power lines should not exceed 550 Watt.
All voltages could be tested on different loads also with external measurements very well and pointed to a good technical conversion of the switched power supply. These are manufacturer values, which one should not exceed, to avoid overloading and too high heat development.
Apropos overloading – of course the PSU offers also all kinds of short-circuit-, overcurrent-, output- and input power protection, (SCP, OVP, OPP, UVP, OTP, OCP) which was tested successfully in the test attempt. Nevertheless one should avoid any installation failures, because under certain conditions it is possible to destroy the PSU, or other parts of the PC (up to a fire by e.g. cable fire with loose or wrong connections).
Furthermore, the power supply has an energy efficent active PFC (Power Factor Correction) for reduction of the reactive power, the EMV noise and improvement of the efficiency. Meanwhile at least the more inexpensive less efficient and bigger passive PFC (upstream throttle) is legally prescribed. So also here the company Cooler Master saved by no means and offers a power pack with 80PLUS GOLD certification, which has a .99 PFC value (>0.9 typical as of Cooler Master).
Own measurements of the test system with ASRock 890GX Extreme3 motherboard, AMD Phenom II 710 X3 CPU, 4GB DDR3-1333 memory, hard disk and ATI Radeon HD4870 PCI-E 2.0 video card resulted in a very low idle value of approx. 146.9 Watt and a maximum value with full system load of 233.9 Watt. Switched off in S5 mode, the test system with the V550S power supply needed approx. 1 Watt. Above all the idle value of 146.9W with small load is thereby higher than the very energy efficiency Cooler Master Silent Pro Hybrid 1050W power supply with an consumption in idle of approx. 122 Watt in spite of the very high 1050W total power, but for example, well below the Xigmatek Tauro 500 Watt power supply that had in our test 154W idle and 249W full load. More power supply reviews can be found here in our hardware reviews page.
You can calculate the current consumption with cost of electricity easily:
Interactive power consumption calculator
The MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures) of the power supply is according to the manufacturer with 40°C about 100,000 hours, which distinguishes finally the reliability of the power supply, this time between 2 possible errors is enormously good.
For the high durability contributes the high-quality Japanese 105°C capacitors and also the 120mm fan. The Yate Loon D12BH-12 12 Volt 7.2 Watt 120mm fan reached thanks to temperature control an optimal adjustment of the volume for necessary cooling and the fan noise is very silent even with higher PSU load. Fortunately even for the Bulk-Caps inside of this power supply high-quality 105°C capacitors are used, which offers a Hold-Up time of approx. 16ms on full load.
Cooler Master V 550 Watt Layout, Design and Features …