Cooler Master V650 GOLD-V2 WHITE EDITION PSU Review

Today we'll be taking a look at Cooler Master's V650 Gold V2 White Edition Power Supply. Ask any gamer what the most important part of a computer is and you’ll get answers ranging from GPU to CPU to peripherals. While there are cases for each, none of it really matters if you can't trust the power you are feeding them. Your expensive GPU, your flagship GPU, your favorite keyboard all have one thing in common, and that is where they draw power from. Most people don’t think about the power supply, but it has a very serious job to do. It has to take high voltage AC, often full of electrical ‘noise’, and turn it into highly precise DC for multiple things in your computer that change their demands literally billions of times a second. Launch your favorite game and in a single click your idling system can spin everything up to 100% instantly. If your power supply isn’t up to the task, weird instability and crashes and sometimes very bad things can happen. Ask around any forum and you’ll find a few horror stories where a failing PSU took part of the computer with it when it expired. Cooler Master is here to show you that its new Gold V2 series power supplies are not only up to the task, but can look good while doing it! PC Test Bench would like to thank Cooler Master for sending the V650 Gold-V2 power supply over to check out! Cooler Master’s take on the V650 GOLD-V2 White Edition power supply: The V Gold - v2 series delivers a top-shelf power supply unit in 550, 650, 750, and 850 wattage levels. It offers an 80 PLUS Gold efficiency rating, full-modular cabling, optional semi-fanless operation with a hardware-based hybrid switch, a 135mm FDB fan, 16AWG PCIe high-efficiency cables, and a 10-year warranty. This series has brought together a number of innovations and improvements from past products to form a PSU that meets all your needs. The 100% Japanese capacitors, half-bridge LLC resonant converter, and DC-DC circuitry work together, resulting in a product that even the pros can respect. Features: 80 PLUS GOLD CERTIFIED The efficiency of your power supply unit is important because it directly affects your system's performance and your power bill. The efficiency rating does not reflect the quality or reliability of a PSU. It only reflects the unit's ability to move power from the wall to your components. The higher a PSU's efficiency is, the lower the total amount of power it needs to power your system. The V Gold series has an 80 PLUS Gold efficiency rating, meaning it has a guaranteed typical efficiency of 90%. PERFORMANCE DRIVEN TOPOLOGY The V Gold - v2 is a professional-grade power supply unit made for the normal user. It's more than just the 80 PLUS Gold efficiency rating. It's the performance, stability, reliability, lifespan, and so much more. That quality starts with the technology used on the inside. The half-bridge LLC resonant converter and DC-DC technology, made with 100% Japanese capacitors, work together to create a PSU that offers reliable and stable voltage outputs for safer, more reliable performance and higher efficiency. A BIGGER, BETTER FAN The V Gold - v2 keeps cool under pressure. The fluid dynamic fan bearing creates less friction, making it great for low RPM operations. This technology, combined with a larger 135mm fan, keeps the fan running smoothly and efficiently for longer, keeping the noise level down and extending the lifespan of the PSU. The cooling system isn't just bigger, it's better. And when you aren't pushing your system too hard, the semi-fanless mode will keep the unit completely silent when under 40% maximum load. The built-in analog hybrid switch allows you to disengage fanless mode at any time with a simple button press for testing, debugging, or simply achieving maximum cooling at all times. FULL-MODULAR CABLING Cabling is often the most troublesome part of building a PC. The V Gold - v2 can't solve all your cabling problems but it's an excellent place to start. With full control and customization of your cables, you don't have to have excess cables cluttering your PC. This level of control can reduce cable bulk which can increase airflow and make your system look as great as it runs. And with the included 16AWG PCIe cables, you'll get increases to both efficiency and style. All models now include two EPS connectors. IMPROVED PCI-E CABLE CONDUCTIVITY The V Gold - v2 series comes with 16AWG PCIe cables. These are thicker than current industry standard 18AWG cables, meaning less heat resistance during use. The reduction in heat resistance improves efficiency and stability so your components can get the most out of that 80 PLUS Gold rating. As an added bonus, the lower resistance means less ambient heat in your case being expelled from your cables, making your entire system safer and cooler than the same setup with standard-issue cables. 10 YEAR WARRANTY The V Gold series offers top-quality power supply units that can and will deliver professional-grade performance at normal use wattage levels. Just because you don't need 1000 watts of power doesn't mean you shouldn't get the quality that goes with it. You can trust this PSU for all your computing needs, whether it's casual work or hefty, continuous sessions. Just in case you aren't sure, all V Gold series models come with a 10-year warranty. Chances are you'll be changing homes before you need to change this power supply. Specifications: ATX VERSION - ATX 12V V2.52 INPUT VOLTAGE - 100-240V INPUT CURRENT - 9-4.5A INPUT FREQUENCY - 50-60Hz DIMENSIONS (L X W X H) - 160 x 150 x 86 mm FAN SIZE - 135mm FAN BEARING - FDB FAN SPEED - 1500 RPM NOISE LEVEL @ 20% - 0 dBA NOISE LEVEL @ 50% - 18.3 dBA NOISE LEVEL @ 100% - 32.1 dBA EFFICIENCY - 90% @ Typical Load 80 PLUS RATING - 80 PLUS Gold ERP 2014 LOT 3 - Yes OPERATING TEMPERATURE - 0-50°C HOLD UP TIME - 17ms MTBF - >100,000 Hours PROTECTIONS - OVP, OPP, SCP, OCP, UVP, OTP A Closer Look Cooler Master is consistent with its packaging and the V650 Gold V2 is no exception with its gray box and signature purple accents. Most of the features and some important info like cable lengths can be found on the rear of the box. Fan and efficiency curves can be seen here as well which is nice for those wanting a high level of detail. The side of the box lists electrical specifications. Inside the box is a draw-string pouch for the power supply, a user guide, and a nylon bag with the cables. The V series power supplies come in black or white finishes, and we have the white one. Cooler Master uses a honeycomb grille for air intake with a large metallic badge in the middle. On the back end, you have a standard power inlet with a mains power switch as well as a hybrid cooling mode switch. Most of the rest of the area is ventilated with the same honeycomb grille. The business end of the V650 Gold V2 is fully modular. You get the main 18+10 motherboard cable plugs, five peripheral cable connections for SATA and Molex, and four 12V only plugs for EPS (CPU) and PCIe (GPU) cables. One side has a label that gives electrical specifications as well as some regulatory badges. Cables: The PSU comes with 8 DC cables, a regionally correct AC power cord, and a baggie containing some Velcro cable wraps, zip ties, and mounting screws. The main 24-pin and CPU power cables consisting of an 8-pin EPS and 4+4 are all about 650mm long. The pair of twin 6+2 PCIe cables have about 120mm between plugs and is about 550mm to the first set of connections. This could get a little short on cases with top-mounted power supplies, but those are getting rare these days. Both SATA and the single peripheral cable are about 500mm to the first plug and show around 120mm between plugs. On the Inside Cooler Master uses a 135mm fan from Ong Hua. Specs on the label indicate a 1800RPM maximum speed and 0.36A (or 4.32 Watts) at 12V. We can't find much info on this brand, let alone this fan but they appear to OEM fans for countless PSU manufacturers which is a good sign. We see a bit of filtering done immediately at the AC inlet. We see two Y-caps and an inline ferrite bead to suppress any high-frequency noise that makes it in on the cord. A couple of chokes, and more Y and X-caps rounds out the filtering stage. The mains power inlet connections and the Hybrid cooling mode switch both plug into the board so the entire power supply PCB can be separated from the case easily. Most of the ‘brains of the operation on crammed on a daughterboard in one corner. Just behind the modular connection board. Incoming AC is rectified by two large full-wave bridge rectifiers which is uncommon on this size of power supply. They are attached to one of the large heatsinks back-to-back along with a few of the Active PFC MOSFETs. You typically only see multiple rectifiers on large units rated 1KW and up. Soldering is nice and clean. We see some smaller SMT components on the bottom of the board but all of the high power stuff is on the top side and heatsinked. The solder connections for the main 12V rail are heavily beefed up with large copper plates at least 1mm thick soldered around the connections. On the modular end, we see several filtering caps with spaces to add more of them, and even a spare connector space of each type for a larger model. Minor rails have their own DC-DC converter daughter board with lots of filtering on it. The main AC filter capacitor is a Toshin Kogyo (TK) 470uF electrolytic rated for 105C. TK is made in Japan and Cooler Master states 100% Japanese capacitors used on this model. Testing & Performance We’ll start by saying we aren’t equipped to do extremely detailed electrical analysis required to pick apart a modern power supply. It takes laboratory-grade dedicated equipment, so we’ll have to make do with some less precise testing. While we normally use a good Fluke Digital Multi-meter, we’ve found the onboard monitoring solutions in modern motherboards to be quite accurate and able to be easily logged with utilities like HWiNFO. Next, we’ll look at ripple on the rails with our Owon VDS-1022/I Digital USB Oscilloscope. The +12V rail under a stress test load registers a peak of 200mV peak to peak ripple. The 5-volt rail does extremely well with 20mV of ripple but also has very little load in our test configuration. The 3.3V rail does a great job with 40mV of ripple. Modern systems typically put very little load on the 3.3V rail with most M.2 drives pulling most of their power from the 3.3V rail. Final Thoughts & Conclusion Cooler Master has done an excellent job with the V650 Gold V2 White Edition. What limited performance testing we can do aside, opening it up told us quite a lot. The V650 Gold is well-engineered and heavily overbuilt. We have no doubts about it sustaining its maximum rated load in a warm environment indefinitely, and judging by the 10-year warranty, Cooler Master doesn’t either. With modern CPUs and especially GPUs being able to pull a crazy amount of power, we’re happy to see 16 Awg cables used for these critical connections. With the rising trend of all-white builds in recent months, the White Edition with all-white cables is a welcome addition to the Cooler Master power supply family. Good job Cooler Master!

Cooler Master V650 GOLD-V2 WHITE EDITION PSU Review

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