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Cooler Master iGreen 500


Date
: 06/30/06 – 03:31:52 AM

Author
:

Category
: Power Supplies

Page 1 : Index

Manufacturer
: Cooler Master

Price
: ~120 Sundial Micro

Cooler Master is a company many of us are very familiar with and fond of. If it weren't for these folks, you readers wouldn't have your monthly contest! In May we gave away the iGreen Power 430W and it was a good power supply aimed towards those need to power a basic machine without too many high end components.

For a majority of the people out there in the world, 430W is more than enough. However, there are a handful of people that'll need 500W or maybe even 600W. If you think you're out of luck, there's no need to worry as Cooler Master has created an iGreen 500W and 600W just for you. This way you can take advantage of the high efficiency performance and cut back on your electricity costs.

Following Jody's three power supply review, I'm going to take the iGreen Power 500W out for a spin, so sit tight as she's about to roar to life.

Page 2 : Package Contents

If you've ever purchased a Cooler Master product before, you'll know they have a very distinct purple color to their boxes. Without a doubt it is back at Overclockers Online.

The front of the box tells you everything you need to know about the power supply. With a bit of math, you'll quickly realize that there is a combined 33A maximum on the 12V rails.

The rest of the details are pretty straight forward.

To make your life easier, Cooler Master has incorporated a handle at the top of the box so you can carry it home like a briefcase. To make sure the space is put to good use, the top flap has a couple of symbols with captions outlining a few features.

The back of the box lists five features; several pictures are also printed with a break down of all the available connectors. We'll be going into more detail about all the things printed on this box in the coming pages.

Off to the side of the package we have the specifications and a legend indicating which country this power supply has been designed for.

Before we open up the package, let's go over the specifications and features.

Page 3 : Features and Specifications

When buying a power supply there are two key factors to consider: a name brand you can trust and the specifications. Cooler Master fits the bill as a trust worthy source and a company that provides ample amounts of information about their products on their webpage.

No specification list is complete without a breakdown of the current supported on each rail.

If you want to see all the details printed on the back of the package's box, I encourage you to read this PDF.

This is what Cooler Master has to say about the iGreen family:

I'm disappointed that Cooler Master did not provide a chart indicating how long each cable. In order to remedy this issue, I'll make my own!

Let's finally open up the package and see what we have inside.

Page 4 : Package Contents

As I had expected, Cooler Master has prepared a very clean and well protected package. The power supply is provided on all sides by a cardboard frame and sits inside a clear plastic bag.

Inside the box we have a manual, a power cable and 4 screws for you to mounting the power supply to your case.

Upon pulling out the power supply we see that the chassis is well protected to prevent anything from scratching the paint. The cables are also sleeved and appear to be very neat and tidy.

It would have been nice if Cooler Master sleeved all the cables right up to the butt of the molex connector so we don't have to see the individual strands of cable.

While there are Ferrite cores for filtering on the PCI-E connectors, we won't find them on the 4-pin or SATA power connectors, which is a small but insignificant disappointment.

The chassis of the power supply holds a very nice shine to it. In the image below, the left coin is real and the right coin is a reflection off the paint job!

In addition to the spectacular mirror finish paint job, Cooler Master has taken the necessary precautions to ensure even the finest details aren't scratched. Take the 120mm fan at the bottom of the power supply…

Some companies would leave it as-is but Cooler Master has put a little adhesive tape so their logo doesn't get scratched off. Is it necessary? Of course not, but it's a nice little touch to show Cooler Master cares about the overall look of the package.

To the side of the power supply is a sticker covering up the beautiful finish. This sticker gives a break down of the amps provided on each rail. I think something like this could be removed or made smaller so all the decorative power supplies can be seen and envied.

The back side of the power supply has a nice LED in addition to common mesh backing we see everyday. Under normal operations, the red LED isn't on. I've only seen it kick into action when I started up the power supply without any load. I suspect if it's on, it's not a good sign – an indication of an overload.

Opening up the power supply, Cooler Master has decided to use a dual ball bearing model. This has advantages and disadvantages and we'll discuss those in the performance page.

From the picture, the fan looks like a re-badge.

Lifting the fan out of the way, we get a good clean view of what's underneath.

The capacitors on the circuit board are made by LTec which is owned by NIE Group. They have been in the industry since 1974 with the first establishment in Malaysia. They now have offices in Singapore (HQ), Malaysia(Penang, Kuala Lumpur & Johor Bahru), Thailand(Bangkok), China(Hong Kong, Guangdong) and S.Korea (Seoul). While they are not Japanese made capacitors, I haven't heard too many bad things about these guys.

As you can see from the above photo, the interior is pretty clean. The heatsink is pretty small, which I like to think means high efficiency. The cables a fairly organized and the PCB clearly indicates where you can find the different rails.

Let's move to the installation.

Page 5 : Installation

It's never difficult to install a new power supply. It's more of a tedious job with the majority of the time spent unwiring and rewiring everything. Sliding the power supply into my Silverstone SST-TJ04 and TJ05 was not a problem. The holes lined up perfectly and the cable reached the bottom of the case without any problems.

For my testing, I like to leave all my hardware sprawled out on the table so I don't need to worry about cable management or the likes of that. All of the connectors fit into their respective receptacle without an issue. Within a few minutes, I was ready to boot up my system and big my tests.

Page 6 : Performance

Before I dive into the details of the performance, here's a break down of my machine.

While I don't have a top of the line machine, it fits the bill for what most people would have. Upon powering up my computer, the power supply was very quiet. However, it was only when I turned off the computer I started hearing noises that were out of place. What I heard was a rattling sound coming from the fan. This is what Cooler Master has to say about that:

Since the noise was only happens when the fan is spinning down, it wasn't a huge deal to me. It does run on for a couple of seconds which could be annoying at night if you've set your PC to shutdown after a DVD is finished burning.

Moving onto the testing phase of the power supply, there were three test conditions I wanted to run through. Each condition then involved multiple readings and the result we see below is the average of those. The first test condition was with no load and just the power supply on. The second was with the system under full load for 5 hrs and the last was after the system was idle for 3 hrs.

Here are the results:

24 Pin Main Power Connector

8 Pin Auxiliary Power Connector

4 Pin Auxiliary Power Connector

6 Pin PCI-E Power Connector

4 Pin Molex Power Connector

SATA Power Connector

The voltages are more or less bang on and that's great news for everyone. The results have been pretty consistent over the past two months I've had this power supply. I've managed to throw out my original results after 6 weeks of full load and on this 8th week it doesn't look like the numbers have budged an inch. However, the real test would have been 2 years of abuse and not a mere two months.

One thing I really would have liked to test was the current the 5Vsb could take as Cooler Master boldly states the 3.0A continuity current will allow for more USB devices and even charge USB products while the PC is powered off!

Page 7 : Conclusion

The iGreen 500 has more than enough juice for any need. I've let my system burn away with both SiSoft Sandra CPU burn in and prime without the voltages budging an inch. The same can even be said after 20 hrs of Memtest on my Super Talent sticks.

There's no doubt that what will sell this power supply is the great look it has the reputation company from the box. The mirror like finish rivals the work done by guys like Ultra Products and it'll certainly be a common feature we'll be seeing more of.

The only thing that Cooler Master could have improved was finding a cooling system that offered both longevity and silence. Even though the noise only occurred during shutdown, it's the little things that may make some people tick.

Advantages

Stable lines
Great Finish
Higher than normal 5Vsb current for more devices

Disadvantage

Noisy fan on shut down
No 5 year warranty on 400,000 hr MTBF

Overclockers Online would like to thank Cooler Master for making this review possible.