Page 4 - Minor Tests and Conclusion
Power supplies are interesting products, because often, reviews of products in this category are conducted and tested in methods that make it difficult to distinguish one power supply from another. Many aspects must be taken into consideration. Certain criteria consist of efficiency, noise, power ripples, and of course the ability to pull out the rated specifications. Because many cannot afford such equipment to obtain results regarding those aspects, articles covering power supplies often come out with less than adequate and acceptable information. As this is a product report -- not a review -- what we are doing is a close examination of the power supply and the internal hardware and build. But what we can do for you is do some minor testing with the results we can present to you with and let other review sites with professional equipment show you the actual test results. We are not going to try to create useless test results by installing the power supply into the latest gaming rig and try to take readings from that, as this is not even remotely the correct way to test power supply units. We understand that many websites do that as a means of load testing, but the results, even if you use an oscilloscope and multimeter at each output location, are not sufficient, nor does it accurately reflect the performance of the power supply.
Using a power supply tester, we exerted a minimal load on the power supply to see what the results of the Cooler Master V SFX Gold ATX 3.0 850W are. The initial consumption was 7.7W, which indicates the basic load-free power consumption of the power supply is very good. Independent sources with professional load testing equipment showed the Cooler Master V SFX Gold ATX 3.0 850W delivered good efficiency for its class and low voltage regulation and ripple across all rails. The power supply has an 80 Plus Gold rating, but has no Cybenetics ETA certification at the time of writing this review.
Voltages with minimal loads are accurate, which is a basic requirement of power supplies out of the box. This power supply is ATX 3.0 compliant and officially supports Alternative Sleep Mode with 100 to 150ms PG specifications, and this is indicative of the 120ms power good signal from the tester. The ATX design specifications state a PSU's PG is required to be between 100ms and 500ms, with 250ms maximum for Non-Alternative Sleep Mode and 150ms for Alternative Sleep Mode.
Active power correction is important to correct AC load line loss. In AC power, there are three components to it, as there is a phase difference between current and voltage. This makes up the power triangle, which consists of the following: Average usable power (P, measured in watts), reactive power (Q, denoted as VA-R), and total power (S, written as VA). While they all have the same physical units, it is not the same thing as aforementioned. What we want is the average usable power with as little wasted reactive power as possible. The total power provided over the AC line is the magnitude of the two combined (sqrt(P^2+Q^2)). Power factor can then be easily calculated by P divided by S. The ideal value is 1.00, and this is where active PFC comes in. The Cooler Master V SFX Gold ATX 3.0 850W has active PFC, and the power factor will approach 0.99 with a nominal load.
The Cooler Master V SFX Gold ATX 3.0 850W has a reasonably quiet fan operation. Under minor loads, the power supply is silent due to the fan not turning on under 40% load, scoring 0/10 where 0 is silent and 10 is loud. Under more normal usage, the power supply made some more noise, coming in at 4.0/10 in my subjective opinion. This PSU is not Cybenetics LAMBDA rated for noise.
Cooler Master provided this product to APH Networks for the purpose of evaluation.
The Cooler Master V SFX Gold ATX 3.0 850W is a great SFX power supply. Packing 850W into such a tiny form factor definitely lives up to the company's "small but mighty" claim. The 10-year warranty and 80 Plus Gold rating can put one at ease for the dependability and expected efficiency of this little PSU. Having the Cooler Master V SFX Gold ATX 3.0 850W updated to comply with the latest ATX 3.0/PCIe 5.0 standard to handle the latest graphics cards is a huge plus with the inclusion of the 12VHPWR connector. This PSU looks good externally, and that is continued internally. Inside, the soldering points are clean, and everything is packed efficiently. However, Cooler Master saying it has "high-quality Japanese capacitors" does not mean 100% Japanese brand capacitors, as you will find Chinese brand capacitors on the secondary side. Other than that, the cables could be longer to improve compatibility with larger cases, but that is not really the intention of the V SFX Gold ATX 3.0 850W anyway. The current price for this PSU at press time is $110 USD, which is a great price for what you get.
Page Index
1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications
2. Physical Look - Outside
3. Physical Look - Inside
4. Minor Tests and Conclusion
