Introduction

For the past decade we've seen the power envelopes of CPUs and GPUs being pushed further and further to maximize performance, while at the same time the same components have gotten much more effective at conserving power when not fully loaded. This wide power consumption gap between a lightly loaded and a fully loaded system. In combination with intelligent fan controls, this makes it possible to have a near silent machine when doing light office work that turns into something that makes you put on your headphones on when you start your game.

With power supplies getting more and more efficient we have also benefited from semi-passive operating modes. While some models have fairly conservative fan ramp up profiles, others will turn up the fan RPMs quite rapidly. So if noise is something that you absolutely want to minimize, you can either carefully pick the PSU that has the best acoustic real world performance, or to be 100 % sure, pick a power supply that's completely fanless and will remain silent even delivering its maximum rated power.



Today we're looking at the Cooler Master X Silent Edge Platinum (850 W)—a fully passive power supply, which, at least on paper looks like a great option for a really powerful single-GPU rig. With advertised 80 Plus Platinum efficiency levels, ATX 3.1 support and an industry leading 15-year warranty, there's not much more one could ask for. Does that translate into excellent real world performance? We'll see. But for now let's start with the vendor-provided specification summary.

Specifications

Packaging and Accessories

The X Silent Edge Platinum comes in quite a big box, which follows the overall black theme of the series. On the back there's the list of features as well as the main specifications of the PSU.


Opening the box revels a neatly packaged unit, a cable pouch and a user manual with some additional pamphlets, regarding how to correctly install the PSU to maximize airflow.


Besides the PSU, manuals and cables the packaging includes mounting screws, a few zip ties and three Velcro ties.


Inside the box we first are greeted by a short user's manual, a bag of neatly packaged cables and the power supply itself. The accessory kit includes the modular cables, an AC cable, manual, screws, a few zip ties and a PCIe slot bracket.

The cable list, as seen in the specifications, is quite extensive, and we will have a more detailed look at them in the cabling section below.