The 550W and 80 PLUS Gold certified (@115 V) Cooler Master V Semi Modular V550S, made by Enhance Electronics, is not really new on the market, in fact it has been there for almost two years. I reviewed the V550S at the end of 2013. But I must admit I quite liked the unit – it showed good voltage regulation and one of the best ripple suppressions I have seen so far. In addition to that, it is semi-modular and comes with 5-year warranty. The only thing I did not like at the time was capacitor choice. But Cooler Master had quite quickly deprecated the original VS series and made a new one – V Semi Modular.
But there is one serious problem: both the units look 100% the same, their name is the same (in this case, V550S) and also the codename (RS-550-AMAA-G1) is the same. This is it – almost no-one could really tell one from the other. Also, Cooler Master does not have a reputation for making really good units as they have been producing mainstream units which often were not even able to deliver their rated power for a long time. So people quickly forgot about the VS series as not being worth buying because of those bad capacitors and anyway, it is Cooler Master, let’s talk about Seasonic! But we should not condemn the V Semi Modular series at all.
As I discovered last year, compared to the Seasonic S12G and G series everyone is buying as one of the best units on the market, the VS-series units have been way better in both ripple suppression and voltage regulation, all protections worked and the units did not burn like Seasonic ones even under my artifical load tester. Their fan is slightly quieter, they should not make any whining or whistling noises and they are covered by the same 5-year warranty. And in the meantime, most of the older units from the first revision have sold out. So now you should get only the new ones which have high quality capacitors like in Seasonic units. So if everything else stayed the same and the V550S now only got better capacitors, they are simply among the best golden units on the market. If you are still not sure you will get the right one, as I have recently learned, there is one difference from which you can easily tell the units apart. Stay tuned for the review, we will check the new V550S revision out!
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UPDATE: the full review has been published
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