When it comes to building your new rig there is one thing that often gets overlooked while being arguably the most important piece to the puzzle. That would be your power supply. After throwing down hundreds or thousands of dollars its really hard to force yourself to do the same with your power supply, especially when there is a cheaper model next to it and they both will power your rig right? Not only is quality important with a power supply, but you also need to keep in mind its fit, efficiency, wattage, and wiring. Today we are going to take a look at Cooler Master's new V1000 power supply to see where it fits in those four aspects.
Product Name: Cooler Master V1000 Power Supply
Sample Provided by: Cooler Master
Written By: Wes
Pictures by: Wes
**Disclaimer**
LanOC Reviews only covers the features of power supplies due to not having the equipment to test them up to our standards. Because of this you will not see a performance section, a final verdict, or awards. Because of that we prefer to call this a preview rather than a review. Thank you for understanding; we keep our standard to the absolute highest for you, our reader.
Specifications
Model |
RS-A00_AFBA-G1 |
Type |
Intel Form Factor ATX 12V V2.31 |
PFC |
Active PFC(>0.9 typical) |
Dimension |
150 x 170 x 86mm / 5.9 x 6.7 x 3.4 inch |
Fan Type |
135mm FDB fan |
Efficiency |
90%@ Typical Load |
MTBF |
>100,000 Hours |
Protection |
OVP / UVP / OPP / OTP / SCP |
Regulatory |
CE / TUV / TUV-SUDNRTL / FCC / GOST / CCC / BSMI / C-tick / KCC |
Connectors |
M/B 24 Pin Connector x 1 CPU12V 4+4 Pin x 2 PCI-E 6+2 Pin x 8 SATA x 9 4 Pin Peripheral x 5 4 Pin Floppy x 1 |
AC INPUT |
100-240V~ 12-6A 60-50Hz |
||||
DC OUTPUT |
+3.3V |
+5V |
+12V |
-12V |
+5Vsb |
25A |
25A |
83A |
0.5A |
3A |
|
TOTAL POWER |
125W |
996W |
6W |
15W |
|
1000W |
Packaging
The V1000’s packaging has a zoomed in picture of its full modular connections across the front. In this picture you can even see that the V1000 even has a modular 24 pin cable as well. V1000 is placed across the front along with a small section with small details about the power supply like its modular cable design, 135mm fan, and 100% Japanese capacitors. Around back there are two graphs showing how the V1000’s fan curve is configured to keep things quiet by not spooling up until you hit over 70% load and the V1000’s efficiency curve. I also love that they have pictures of each of the cable connection types with the quantity of the connections available on the V1000. On the side of the box we finally get a peak of the purple color that Cooler Master I known for. Along with that they have included a full specification listing for those who need more details on the V1000.
When you open up the V1000’s packaging thee is a second box inside. To make it easy to pull out I love that Cooler Master cut a small hole out of the end. Inside the power supply itself is covered completely in a foam and the space on the end of the box is filled with a bag filled with all of the cables. The power supply also comes in a soft bag as well, obviously you won’t need this once you install it into your computer, so you can put it to use around the house. There is a small manual that comes in under the V1000, there is a short specification listing as well as pin-outs for each of the cable connections as well.
Photos and Features
Let’s be honest, when you are building a high end PC style is something you have to consider. Not only do you want your computer to perform but you also want it to look amazing. I can tell right away that Cooler Master knew this when designing the V1000. In the past some of the Cooler Master Power Supplies just didn’t have anything to set them apart. This time around with the V1000 they added a little styling. First on the sides above the V1000 and Cooler Master logos there are groves, it might not be much but they do give an an otherwise boring side a little style while not going overboard. On the non-fan side they have to have all of the power supplies information, so there isn’t anything going on there beyond that. But on the fan side the V1000 had a silver panel put in around the fan. On top of that the fan grill is much nicer than the standard wire ring grill that you typically see, with this being a honeycomb design. Then in the middle they did slip in the Cooler Master badge as well. The biggest shame really is that most cases are vented for the power supply meaning this whole area will be covered up. But if it’s not in your case, this will really draw some attention.
As you can see below, we did have a small fitment issue. I doubt that this will be an issue with full production models as we did get this before the V1000’s launch, but I would still keep an eye out in case it is part of a bigger issue.
Around back most of the V1000 is covered in ventilation other than the power switch and the power connection. Unlike some of the other high wattage power supplies we have seen the V1000 uses a standard plug rather than the larger high wattage plug we saw on the 1500 watt M2 that we saw from Cooler Master previously.
On the other side we have all of the modular power connections. I love that along the bottom they have drawn out all of the connections and labeled them but I wish they would have also put the same labels above or below the plugs as well. Just to recap what we have. We have one 18 pin plug and one 10 pin that combine for the 24 pin cable, two 8 pin CPU connections, four six pin PCI-E plugs, five HDD/SATA plugs, and one 10 pin motherboard plug.
I mentioned it when talking about the packaging but I want to bring it up again. All of the cables come in a heavy duty bag that is held closed with Velcro. This was never a big deal to me until recently when I went to organize my computer drawers. As you can imagine I have a lot of various PCs for different uses and all of them have modular power supplies, this made for a crazy mess. Even for someone who may only have one or two PCs being able to keep all of the cables in an easy to find location makes a world of difference. It might be a small detail, but the one time you need to find a cable to add another video card you will be very happy that Cooler Master included it.
For motherboard specific connections we have our two eight pin CPU cables and the 24 pin power cable. The 24 pin cable is the only cable out of the bunch that is sleeved over the flexible flat design that you see with the CPU cables. It would be interesting to see something other than this type of sleeving but options are basically limited to this and individually sleeved that costs more.
For Molex cables we have two total with each having two Molex connections each. One also has a small floppy connection on the end as well on the off chance that someone still uses a floppy drive in their new high end pc.
The V1000 comes with three SATA cables, all in the flexible thin cabling that we love. Each of them has three SATA plugs, enough to power all of your SSD’s or hard drives.
The last batch of cables are all for PCI-e aka video cards. Each of the four cables has two 6+2 plugs on it. We have used this design before and they are extremely helpful, you only need one cable for each video card compared to needing two. On top of that they are the flexible thin cables that I mentioned before, so cable management is much easier than standard cables.
Although Cooler Master went with a standard plug into the power supply over the larger design that we sometimes see on high wattage power supplies. They did still provided a thick heavy duty cable that will handle the V1000’s 1000 watts and more, just be sure not to mix up and use a thin gauge cord from a monitor or something similar.
Overall
So at the end of the day does the V1000 fit the requirements that we set out in the beginning to find out? Well for starters, its styling is top notch and it would look at home in any build. I could see someone taking advantage of its design and repainting the silver finish into a color that matches their specific build even but the silver will go with almost anything. As for fit, at 170mm’s deep we aren’t far off from the smallest power supplies on the market (140mm), considering the high capacity you shouldn’t have trouble at all with it fitting in all but the smallest builds.
As for its wattage, frankly at 1000 watts this will be too big for almost everyone. But people love picking up power supplies that leave headroom. The V1000 will give you enough power to push your triple crossfire or SLI build without any worries.
The last thing we wanted to check on was the V1000’s wiring, are there enough connections for a build that will use 1000 watts and how will the wire management go. With enough PCI-e cables for up to four video cards the V1000 has all situations covered, including motherboards that sometimes require a 6 pin connection for extra power. On top of that we know that the thin and flexible wiring that all but the 24 pin is made out of there won’t be issues routing cables in a tight case.
Cooler Master has actually put together a good well rounded power supply with the V1000. Assuming there are no issues with its performance of course. With a 90% efficiency rating it isn’t the highest on the market but it very close. There are still 80 PLUS Platinum certified that will rank slightly higher but they also cost more. With an MSRP of $219.99 the V1000 still falls in the top 1/3 of 1000 watt power supplies but it is priced below similarly equipped models from the competition.