300W to 450W: 20 Power Supplies on the Test Bench

Cooler Master Real Power Pro 360W & 400W

Cooler Master sent us their new Real Power Pro units with very low wattages of 360W and 400W. There is an additional 500W unit in the series for those that want a bit more oomph. The housing comes in plain black with a very nice looking green sticker on the side. A 120mm fan cools these units. The backside is totally perforated, even around the main switch and AC jack.

Before opening the unit you can already tell who the ODM is, which is why we wanted to have these two new power supplies in our roundup. We have seen many power supplies made by Enhance before, but they are always in the 750W+ market. Cooler Master's Silent Pro series was one of the first to use a newer design from Enhance, and now brings they are the first to use this lower wattage design. Of course, we shouldn't expect too much from such a low-end unit, but Enhance builds nice power supplies. We see a well-equipped power supply with the typical large coils. Teapo makes the capacitors, which we often see on the secondary sides of power supplies. This unit has Teapo on the primary side, which is certainly more for pricing considerations rather than quality.

All but the main ATX cable harness come without sleeving. We have four SATA connectors and five Molex connectors, which is enough for these wattages, and the single 6-pin PEG connector will power your graphics cards if needed. Most companies think if you have a small wattage power supply you will also have a small case; while that is certainly true for many users, we don't understand why many of these power supplies come with harness lengths of around 35cm (14"). The extra 15cm would certainly be beneficial for larger cases, and it wouldn't present a problem for smaller cases either. Cooler Master at least makes the 4-pin 12V connector 50cm long, which is good for people with the jack in unreachable corners of the motherboard. A good motherboard layout will avoid such a problem, but we still see such layout snafus on some of the budget motherboards.