Customer Reviews

Cooler Master Elite 460W ATX +12V V2.31 SATA, PCI-E Power Supply RS460-PSAR-J3-US

5 star:		(45)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Don't listen to the children or those who refuse to accept the facts and want to run a high end grapchics card and do so with a 30$ dollar power supply, then blame the power supply when things don't work right

Also consider with any power supply it will get louder the more load you put on it as this creates more heat and more heat means the need for more cooling. So if you max it out, dont expect it to run like it would with a basic system using onboard graphics, or a mid to low end card like the product was intended for !

For example I am using it with an Ati Radon HD 5570, a Diamond add in PCI sound card, two hard drives and I often have my Zune and Palm Pre Plugged in to it. For this it works great, it runs cool and quiet and has plenty of juice left over.

Simply put when used proeprly, this power supply is a 5 Star unit!

(When used in the proper appliction with onboard graphics or one of the mid range or low end graphics cards like an Ati Radeon HD 5400, 5500, or 5600 series.)

Anything in the 5700 line, though this power supply does just meet the min requirements of 450 watts for an HD 5750 or 5770, it would be just enough jucie. So if you are going to have a whole buch of USB devices, add in cards like WiFi, a premium sound card for gaming, more than one hard drive and all kinds of fans it should be common sense this will not be enough !

Then you have those who actually want to believe they could use a HD5800 or HD5900 series card which Ati clearly states you would need 500 + watts for the 5800 and 650+ for the 5900. Then things go wrong and some will even attmept to smear Cooler Master for a problem they created and comes from their own inablillity to follow directions and their stubborn ignorance which wants to be able to use a three hundred dollar video card with a thirty dollar power supply because they did not have enough money to afford both. Then a few months later they wonder why their power supply fan is loud and why their system fans have been screeming they wonder why their machine is unstable or breaks in just a few months.. LIKE DUAH !

This product was carefully picked by myself with three must haves, it must be affordable less than 40$, two being it must have over 400 Watts as reccomended by ATI for my ATI Radeon HD 5570 Video card and three, it must have low noise to suit my tastes, this power supply delivers all three.

In closing, it's not the most quiet or the best 400 to 500 watt power supply, however it was only thirty dollars if you want the most quiet and best power supply in a given Watt range, you have to shell out the cash to get it kids and Cooler Master makes excellent high end power supplies as well just be ready to pay for it !

I don't have high processing demands, but I did buy this power supply for a budget gaming rig I was building, and it works great. There are plenty of power connection options here, so no one will be left out. Plenty of Molex, SATA, +12 for everyone.

This unit powers a quad core phenom unit with 500GB HDD and 2GB of RAM. My NVIDIA GT430 1GB DDR3 video card also has plenty of juice as well.

If you are looking for a good budget power supply, this is the one for you!

Cooler Master also sells a case with an included 420watt power supply on Amazon as well. You can save 10-20 bucks if you go that route, but you lose 40 watts of POWER!

Yeah I bought this because it was relatively cheap and appeared to have good reviews. Turns out that it has an annoying adjustable fan! Its not that it occasionally gets louder, it adjusts speed from low to high every 2 minutes, literally! It kicks into high speed for about 20 seconds and then its quiet for about 2-3 minutes, then it goes to high speed and so on. This will not stop.
My computer is at idle when this is happening. It doesnt have any GPU cards or anything stressing it at all. This PSU is too annoying to keep. I will be getting a different PSU.
This would be fine for a computer that is hidden in a closet or something like that. If you are looking for a quiet computer, this is NOT the PSU for you. This PSU is the loudest thing in my case!

Thanks for the comments :)
Just to balance it out a bit, this PSU has functioned well for my needs and has been reliable. From a reliability and build standpoint, it has done well for my needs. However, noise is a huge factor in may peoples builds and I think the company pulled a fast one on the customer with this one and could have designed it to work better with heat dissipation and fan settings. Really, the jump in fan noise is ridiculous considering that it could have been designed to run a bit louder but constant.

I guess that's what you do when you want to claim certain low noise level specs and you want to fool the customer into thinking those are constant low noise levels huh?

I am strongly of the opinion that getting a reliable name brand product for power supplies is important. If you're building a bargain system, like I was here, it's tempting to use these "hidden" areas of the computer's hardware to skimp...hey, ya gotta skimp somewhere, right? Don't do it. The longevity of the system depends on this, especially if you'll be taking it places where the electricity fluctuates constantly, you'll run it through transformers, or polarities are not a sure thing. Also, if you might upgrade later, you'll want an HONEST rating of how much power it can handle and reliably distribute. This one CAN. It doesn't even force you to make compromises on price, either.

The only downsides I can think of are:

--Cable/wire management is a bit snarky and snarly since everything is left bare and opened without a sleeve to hold them together. If you're making an uncomplicated build like mine was, though, it can be cleaned up pretty well, and my lower-end system requirements meant wires wouldn't hinder airflow too much, anyhow.

--Has a manual switch for voltage (110 vs 220) changes. I move a lot, and forgetting to do this before plugging in (not just switching on system) will stay with you as a concern. Part of the bargain status of this part.

--Amazon will not ship for weeks if you choose free shipping, the "In Stock" designation notwithstanding.

If you can live with that, save some dough on your next low or medium end build with this part.

I'd strongly recommend this power supply for a "regular" computer with a single hard drive - and a video card that doesn't cost more than a small car. :) If you're building an "eXtreme!" system, you're probably not looking at this anyway. But if the power output is adequate for your needs, this is really a good choice. Cooler Master is an actual name brand, and this thing is shockingly quiet. Like, "almost silent" quiet. I got the 460 watt version, which has one string of old Molex connectors (three larger 4-pin connections and one smaller floppy connector) and two sets of SATA power connectors, two connecters each (for a total of 4 SATA connectors). It's got a couple of the 4-pin 12V connections and a 20/24 pin ATX motherboard connector. All of the individual harnesses have a zip tie roughly midway between the ends (and, on the multi-terminated sections, a zip tie between the connectors), which is a cheap way to keep the wires in a nicer bundle.

The bad?
- The motherboard connector isn't great, since the extra 4-pin segment doesn't firmly attach to the 20-pin segment, which makes it a minor hassle to install in a 24-pin board.
- the wires are just zip-tied to the metal case, rather than passing through a strain relief or grommet.
- only rated at >70% efficient, which means it's making a little more heat than necessary / consuming a little more power than it could
- Has more power outlets for SATA devices than I needed, since I'm still using a PATA-based system.

Those are pretty minor things, though, since the wires shouldn't really ever be moving around (so abrasion against the PS case isn't a big deal), and you only hook the motherboard up once (maybe 2-3 times if you upgrade a lot). And the efficiency, while not awesome, is probably better than whatever came in your generic case or most supplies more than a few years old. Overall, given how quiet this supply is and how well-constructed it feels, I think it's a very good bargain, and will be getting a couple more of these for some computers I have with loud fans and even less efficient no-name power supplies.

BTW, if you're still using a non-SATA system, you should probably go ahead and order a couple of these ATA Male to LP4 Female Power CableS so that you can balance your devices across the separate harnesses. I'd personally suggest putting your optical drive on one harness, your hard drive on another, and fans on the third old-style harness.

You get what you pay for. Lot's of connections with plenty of length for a standard size case but the fan is noisy and vibrates.

Recently purchased this power supply as a replacement for a 5+ year old Dell PC. Since replacing it via the Dell service route would've taken me at least $100+, Amazon was my next logical stop. Regardless this little power supply is absolutely amazing for slightly outdated or lower end systems. The power output is fairly generous for any system. As long as you do not over load your system with extreme gaming graphics cards this baby will keep it running smooth. This power supply isn't that loud under regular load, in comparison to some of the power supply I have worked with in the past this product is actually out performing its price by a long stretch. Only down side I can see is slight annoyance with cable organization, it makes my case look slightly messy but I can at least live with that.

Hands down best budget power supply for its price, I doubt you will find a better one from a reputable manufacturer anytime soon.

Have had this PSU for 3 months under constant heavy usage and has not let me down one bit. Should be used on on average to low end computer builds only though. Any video cards that is Radeon HD 5770 or above is not advised for use with this PSU, it will simply not provide enough power for those GPUs to perform at their best. A MSI GTX550 Ti seems to work real well on this PSU though.

Current Budget Gaming Build

AMD Athlon II X2 2.4gz (An unlocked Sempron 140)
Kingston ValueRAM 4 GB Kit (2x2 GB Modules) 1333MHz PC3-1066 DDR3
Biostar 880G+ Motherboard
MSI nVidia GeForce GTX550 Ti Cyclone OC 1GB DDR5
Cooler Master Hyper 101A Heat-Pipes Direct Contact
GAMMA Classic Series ATX Mid Tower Interior Steel Chassis
Western Digital Caviar Green 1 TB SATA III Intellipower 64 MB Cache
Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit

That's about as far as I would push this PSU, although maybe a Phenom II Quad Deneb (Not BLAKC EDITION) would do just fine as it's only 14w more than an unlocked Sempron 140.

Its a power supply. Cant say alot about it, really. It came on time, and was well packaged. Installed perfectly into my standard sized HP desktop case. I bought, and installed it because I got a video card upgrade that requires a 400 watt minimum power supply.

My wife's Dell Inspiron quit working; just refused to power up. I found this power supply on Amazon based on the reviews and the Cooler Master brand. I had it quick shipped and it was delivered by noon the next day. The hardest part of the job was getting the old power supply out. I had to pull the fan and heat sink to give me room. There were only four connecions; two drives, the motherboard fan and the main bus. Pay close attention to the drive connections. This power supply is 460 watts compared to the 300 watt original, but the size and mount were the same. There were a numer of extra connectors not needed by the Dell Inspiron. Just tuck them out of the way. The whole process took less than an hour and the computer powered up immediately. My wife was happy to have her computer back in under 24 hours, and we saved at least $100 in repair cost. I'm very happy with the product and with Amazon.