Introduction

We would like to thank Cooler Master for supplying the review sample.

Made by Seasonic, a highly respected company CM never worked with before then, Cooler Master’s V series catapulted the company back into the high league of PSU manufacturers. All V units do address the high-end category by offering great performance at really nice price tags, but CM was still in need of a worthy line for the medium category, which is why they chose to team up with Enhance again, their favorite OEM, to utilize a new design promising high performance, and so the new VS series was born. It includes five members with capacities ranging from 450 W to 750 W, which covers the low- and middle-capacity segments. CM's "eye catcher" on these new units is the 3D design mentioned under its characteristics, at least on papers. The following pages of this review will take a close, hard look at this feature to figure out whether it is truly special or just another marketing term.

The main subject of today’s review will then be the V550S unit which, like all other VS units, was designed for PC gamers and performance enthusiasts. It is 80 Plus Gold certified, features a semi-modular cabling design with flat and ribboned modular cables, and uses a Japanese bulk cap in the APFC, which will last longer than a Chinese or Taiwanese one. So far, all characteristics look pretty good, but they do follow the classic road the competition adheres to as well. CM does, on the other hand, speak of a 3D circuit design that will, according to them, make all the difference. To speak frank, we are not used to such innovations from Enhance, the maker of this unit, so we are eager to check this 3D feature out in quite some detail.

Specifications

Efficiency is Gold and Enhance insists on restricting the maximum operating temperature of their implementations to 40°C on paper, but all Enhance units we tested over the last couple months also worked flawlessly at much higher ambient.

This unit comes equipped with all protection features, including OTP (Over Temperature Protection), which can save the unit if anything goes wrong with the cooling fan and operating temperatures are way too high. The fan cooling down this PSU has a 120 mm diameter and uses ball-bearings, so it will last for quite a long time. The problem is that ball-bearing fans are noisier than FDB or sleeve-bearing ones, but CM solves its noise-output problem with an appropriately tuned fan-control circuit.

The dimensions of the V550S are compact, since it is only 14 cm long, so it will fit into every normal case. The warranty is also set at five years, a long enough period for a product of this category, and the price looks decent for its advertised features.

The single +12V rail is strong enough with 45 A max current output. It will easily support the only two PCIe connectors. The minor rails have enough power, and the 5VSB rail can deliver the typical 12.5 W.

Cables & Connectors, Power Distribution

All connectors are long enough, since this unit probably won't be installed into a big case, and the distance among all connectors is good. We do think that the single +12V rail could easily handle a pair of additional PCIe connectors, especially since only one EPS connector is present. There may not appear to be enough SATA connectors at first, but this is only a 550W unit, so we can't expect it to come with connectors in the double digits. However, the good news is that attaching all the modular cables still leaves you with one spare socket on the modular PCB, which would allow you to purchase a suitable SATA cable to easily increase this PSU's SATA count. The same goes for 4-pin Molex connectors, of course. Finally, most gauges of the 24-pin ATX connector and those comprising both EPS and PCIe connectors are 16AWG, while all other modular connectors use the standard 18AWG wires recommended by the ATX spec.

Since this PSU features a single +12V rail, we do not have anything to comment on about its power distribution.

Packaging

The package is small and follows the latest design CM uses on its V series packaging—a dark background and a centralized picture of the unit, with the series name and a brief features description at the bottom of the front. The 80 Plus Gold badge sits in the top-right corner, and CM's logo can be found in the opposite corner.


This side includes the technical and power specification tables, which are useful to both reviewers and interested users.


This side only has the model description and CM's logo.


At the rear of the box are a very brief multilingual features description, a description of all connectors, and two graphs showing the unit's efficiency and fan-speed curves. We would really appreciate it if CM mentioned the ambient of the specific fan-speed curve but can safely assume that it was recorded at normal room temperature (23°C).