XSReviews

Introduction

Over the last couple of years, PCs have become increasingly busy places. Dual core CPUs, twin graphics cards in SLI or Crossfire and soon we will all be looking to add a dedicated physics card to the mix. Added to this with have the increasingly common “Extreme” cooling solutions of water and phase change, plus the myriad of LCD displays, fan controllers and card readers that come standard with many cases these days. All these things mean one thing, more power. Gone are they days when a 400w PSU would support your high powered gaming rig. Where can you turn for your PSU needs to be met? One solution is the Enermax Liberty 620w PSU, a high powered modular PSU with plenty of extras, but is the steep price more than its worth? Lets find out.

A little about Enermax

Enermax Technology Corporation was founded in 1990 by a group of young professional, enthusiastic, and high-tech oriented people in Taiwan . The Enermax founders left high-profile positions from prestigious computer firms, bringing over 10 years of professional experiences to our own firm.

The main products we carry are switching power supplies, PC cases, industrial PC cases, pedestal and tower server cases, CPU coolers, second fans, mobile racks and other peripherals. Enermax has its own design groups and production line. For convenience and better service to our customers worldwide, Enermax has established branch offices with warehouses in Los Angeles and Silicon Valley in United States, Paris in France, Milan in Italy, Tokyo in Japan, Hamburg in Germany, London in UK and has distributors providing service in nearly every major city around the world. Enermax is always looking for the latest cutting edge technology to offer our clients. Enermax’s own designing engineers work around the clock to come up with the best solution and product to meet the demand of the market. Now, Enermax is engaged in developing more powerful types of products to serve customers in the future. To provide efficient coordination, after sales services and technical support to customers is our primary purpose. The Enermax R&D department is proud of its strong engineering background. We focus on developing new products for both potential and existing markets. We also emphasize on new product types, product functions, design and quality. Each year, we release an average of 4 new series of products. Our R&D equipments are sourced both locally and imported from Japan. Based on our product development procedure, we have developed a team of experts to ensure that our products are manufactured to the most rigorous and highest standards imposed by the industry.

Enermax Liberty 620w Features

Enermax Liberty 620w Specifications

A First Look

The first impression I got with this PSU is the proffessionalism with which the box is set out. It isn’t covered in fancy graphics and colourful oversized text, just some pictures of the PSU and the its features. As you can see from the feature list above and on the side of the box, this is one feature rich PSU. Not only are features listed, but there is also a nice specifications table and a few pictures of the different types of cables you get with the power supply.

When you pop open the box of the Liberty 620w you are given your first look at the PSU wrapped in its nice protective bubble wrap. You also get a gander at all the goodies inside the box. You have the user manual, a brochure of other Enermax products, a plastic wallet containing all the cables, some mounting screws, a few Enermax “Power Inside” stickers, 2 plastic stopper caps and, erm, a small string thing…

This plastic carry case/wallet for the cables is quite a nice idea, it allows for any cables that you are not using in your rig (Which of course is completely your choice since this is a modular power supply) to be tucked neatly away in a small and compact storage solution. Its also a good way of carrying any cables around with you; perfect for LAN party situations should you decide to take apart your rig before or while at the LAN.

The stickers and brochure are obviously just a bit of advertising for Enermax, and the string thing, well, I guess you can hang stuff round your neck with it. Just for the record, in my package containing this PSU and some other stuff from Enermax, I was also sent this funky Pen, thanks Enermax!

A Closer Look

Here we have the Enermax Liberty 620w PSU in all its glory. As you can see from the pictures there is a huge 120mm cooling fan positioned behind a surprisingly tasteful gold fan grill. Through the gaps between the grill and fan you can also see there are gold flecked heatsinks inside the PSU to aid in its cooling. I am not usually a fan of gold, but it offsets the shiny black surface of the rest of the PSU very nicely.

With a close up shot of the fan grill you can also see the embossed Enermax logo sat in the centre of the grill.

With a rear shot of the Liberty we can see that it has a honeycomb grill, much like the Hiper TypeR. This is again to aid in keeping this monstously powerful PSU cool. A feature that is pretty standard nowadays but its always worth mentioning, is the on/off switch situated underneath the power lead socket, this allowing you to kill the power to your rig without having to remove cabling.

Another common, but helpful feature to note with this PSU, is having its specifications stuck on the side; always useful.

Here we have a PSU feature that no hardware enthusiast should be without, a modular cableing system. Modular cabling, for those of you who don’t know, is a system that allows you to attatch only the cables you need to the PSU, making for a much tidier case. For example, if you only have one PCIE graphics card, you needn’t have 2 PCIE power cables attatched, meaning that you won’t have one unused cable cluttering up your case and restricting its air flow. On the Liberty 620w you have 2 dedicated PCIE power slots and 6 “Free-For-All” slots, plenty of slots for even the busiest of cases.

The cables that come with this PSU are braided to help protect them against accidents with sharp objects, but also to aid you in keeping your case tidy. However the braiding on the cables without modular attatchments (The main 24-pin (20+4) ATX connection, fan speed monitoring plug and +12V cable.) was quite thick and did cause a slight problem inside my case. Since my case is quite large I would expect those with smaller cases to have some problems fitting these cables if they have lots of other cables around and about, but I am sure that with a bit of elbow grease they could get the cables in place without too much hassle. The main PSU attatched cables have also been labelled to make sure that the PSU noobs among us know which cables are which.

Testing

To test this PSU, I set it up and let my computer sit idle for 30 mins and then using speedfan I took voltage readings of the 3.3v, 5v and 12v rails. I then placed my rig under load using 3dMark01 to stress GPU, memory and CPU; while running Folding at Home in the background to make sure CPU usage was at 100%.

The test setup was as follows:

AMD 3500+ @ 2.75ghz & 1.65v
DFI LanParty NF4 SLI-DR
OCZ 1gb PC4000 VX @ 250htt & 3.3v
Nvidia 6600 256 @ 420/518

The results for the testing were as follows:

Conclusion

Its obvious that this PSU has everything you could need in a PSU. Its rails are some of the sturdiest I have ever seen, it looks phenominal with its jet black paint job and gold flecked fan grill and internal heatsinks. The size of some of its cabling was a bit of a bother, but the Pros for this PSU far overshadow this very minor detail. All in all, I would highly reccommend this PSU to anyone who is running a powerful rig, this 620w powerhouse will not let you down.

Pros	Cons
Rock solid rails	Cable braiding is a bit thick
Well cooled with honey comb grills and “Silent” 120mm fan	A tad Expensive
Looks awesome, the offsets with the black brilliantly
Lots of goodies