Cooler Master Silent Pro 700W

A Power Supply with Rubber Edges?

Yes the Silent Pro has rubber bits on either end, but why? It's simply meant to cut the vibration when you screw it into the case. The other end where the cables protrude from also gets the same treatment, because the whole thing might also sit in a case to avoid stressing the tiny screws - it's an encasing solution.

It's the same concept as isolating and grommeting your fans and hard drives, and because the Silent Pro has one huge 14cm fan covering an entire side the centrifugal force could do with being isolated. The problem is with these rubbery bits is that they are, well, crap. We brought this up when we first saw the concept at CeBit earlier this year but were told the final quality would be more solid, but it isn't - it's only held on with a bit of glue.

It took about five minutes before one side came half off as we man-handled it around to take pictures, and the other end needed to be removed otherwise it wouldn't actually screw into a few cases we tried it with.

A great idea in theory, hampered by poor execution.


But it doesn't detract from the design though, which is pretty awesome. Sure, it has big "look at me!" attention stickers on the side but they still fit with the rest of the look and the embossed logo in the top looks funky although you're unlikely to see it once it's in a case.


More on the connectors over the page but by 700W standards we'd thought you'd get a few more to say the least. They may look good, fitting flush to the back and Cooler Master even includes a little diagram to explain which is which (if the different plug sizes and colours weren't obvious enough), but there are only two PCI-Express connectors? The Corsair TX750W has four, the PC Power and Cooling 750W Silencer has four - surely a 700W unit can offer at least three, for when you need a second card for PhysX or Havok duties.


Cooler Master uses a single, large 50 Amp rail for all of its 12V duties. This means no matter what you plug in you'll always have access to the full 600W of 12V power, rather than having just a slice from one particular rail. This is a good thing.