When it comes to testing a power supply, there are two courses to travel. One takes you down a path using a device to stress out the PSU and provide data regarding the power levels across all three rails. The second, and the one I make use of, utilizes an actual test system to give a more real-world account of what the power supply is capable of. While both methods have their merits, I prefer to use an actual computer to more closely resemble the manner of use that you, the potential customer, will put the product through.
That said, let’s take a quick look at the test system. At the request of readers, I have beefed up the system to put a more realistic strain on the power supply.
Gigabyte 965P-DS4 motherboard (Supplied by Gigabyte) Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 processor 2x 1024MB Corsair XMS2-8500-C5 memory (Supplied by Corsair) GeCube X1900XTX graphics (Supplied by GeCube) Sapphire X1900XT graphics (Supplied by Sapphire) Western Digital 250GB SATA hard drive 2x Western Digital 160GB SATA hard drives Western Digital 80GB hard drive Sony 52x CD-ROM optical drive Samsung 16x DVD-R optical drive 2x 120mm fans 4x 80mm fans
While this isn’t a Quad-GPU setup, we are certainly in the realm of having a system that is going to put a significant power drain on any power supply. Testing will consist of checking the power levels across all three rails at idle and again while the system is under stress. This should give us a good look at the capabilities of the power supply being tested.
Results
Since I am not running any of the newer graphics boards that require so much power, I decided to go ahead and leave the test system set up with two video cards in place. With a rating of 700 watts, if this power supply couldn’t hang with this setup then I think we would have issues to deal with.
Of course, a quick glance at the graph above shows that this was not the case. While not as long in the tooth as some of the more powerful models we have played with, the Real Power M700 was fully capable of handling the load even when the system was being pushed. This bodes extremely well for those who want a solid performer but don’t have a few hundred bucks to throw out for a true powerhouse. Cooler Master has done a fine job of compromising between performance and price, and even with a dual graphics system it handled the job at hand with ease.
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