BlueSmoke - Review : Enermax EG356P-VE

Date

: Jan 27th, 2002

Category

: Cases

Manufacturer

: Enermax

Author

: Tom Smith

You can have the best computer hardware in the world but without a good power supply you aren't going anywhere. That's where Enermax comes in. They produce a line of very high quality products. One of these lines are their power supplies. If you are running an Athlon system, then it is a must to have a high quality power supply.

As I am quite unsure how to review the power supply I figured that I would show you the pictures that I took, tell you about the features, and give you the voltage results. Now wait that sounds like a regular review, go figure.

One of the first thing that I noticed as I opened the box was the amount of gold on this thing. There is gold plating on the connections in the Molex plugs and the motherboard connections. This is a good thing since gold is the best conductor of electricity. There is also gold on the fan guards, granted this is just for aesthetics and does not hinder nor improve performance.

The unit has 2 fans in it. One 92mm ball bearing on the bottom of the power supply and one 80mm ball bearing fan on the back. The speed and noise of the 80mm fan can be adjusted by a knob on the back of the power supply. This fan can also be monitored by plugging it into a header on the motherboard.

Another nice feature was the amount of connector that Enermax supplied with the power supply. With 8 Molex and 2 floppy connectors you can be sure that you can plug as many devices into your box as you will need.

The power supply is also compatible with Pentium 4 motherboards and included the extra 12V plug, as well as the additional AUX connector that is required for some server motherboards.

In my box I have a total of 5 hard drives, DVD-ROM, CD-RW, Digital Doc 3, Antec bay cooler, 4 x 92mm Panaflo HO, and a 120mm Sunon fan. This set up is bound to put stress on any power supply. Let's see how the power supply stood up in my setup.

Platform Information
CPU/s	AMD AthlonXP 1800+
Motherboard	Soyo SY-K7V Dragon Plus!
Cooler	Retail HSF
Interface Material	Retail Thermal Paste
Hard Drive	Maxtor 5400 RPM 20GB Maxtor 7200 RPM 40GB (RAID 0+1)
Optical Drive/s	Creative Labs Encore 8X DVD-ROM Plextor 12/10/32A
Video Card/s	nVIDIA GeForce2 Pro (default clock)
Operating System	Windows 2000 Professional (Service Pack 2)

Voltage (V)	Reported Value (V)	Difference (V)
+3.3	+3.43	+0.13
+5	+4.90	-0.10
+12	+12.30	+0.30
-5	-5.10	+0.10
-12	-11.70	-0.30

Now to test the variable speed control of the fan I took the power supply out of my case. (you could not hear a jet if it flew into your house with my case running). I jump started the power supply and cranked the know to the "H" setting on the controller. The fan was noticeably loud, and had good airflow. I then cranked to down to its lowest setting. A drastic reduction in noise and the fan still had decent air flow.

I want to thank Frankie over at Maxpoint for sending this unit to us for review.

If you are looking to run a quiet high power box or just looking to reduce the noise from you current power supply, then this guy will get it done. seeing the good numbers that it produced while under a significant load was equally impressive. I did notice a 1 deg. F drop in case temperature with the fan running on high speed and a .4 drop in temperature with the fan turned down to it's lowest setting. The unit has also brought back a great deal of stability to my computer. It goes to show you that all power supplies, including the ones listed on AMD recommended power supply list, are created equal. Overall I am very impressed with this power supply. Highly Recommended!