The Enermax Liberty - Getting long in the tooth, but still worth a look
by Christoph Katzer on July 30, 2007 1:40 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
Secondary Side
The PCB that is home to the jacks used for the cable management looks very clean and appears to be of good quality. This is better than some other PSUs where we've seen a huge amount of solder all over the place. The modular cable design also eliminates a lot of clutter from the insides of the PSU, particularly when done in this fashion using a PCB. Even if the resistance were to increase slightly because of the modular cable connections, the improved airflow may help to offset this. Only the 24-pin/ATX-12V connections have wires in the interior of the PSU enclosure.
The secondary side looks good as well. The cables attached to the PCB have small shrinking hoses on the end for protection if they loosen from the board. On the left side we can see a small chip on the PCB that includes the protection features of this power supply. It is a chip called PS223 from the Taiwanese company Silicon Touch Technologies. This kind of chip is used often by Enermax and we have never encountered any problems with its functions as well. It combines support for Over Voltage Protection, Under Voltage Protection, Over Current Protection, and Over Temperature Protection.
The Fan
The Liberty has a large 12cm fan installed that blows air onto the components and heatsinks. It's manufactured by Globefan, another company whose parts are often used in Enermax products. It can run at a nice low speed of under 1000 RPM, but when necessary it can spin at over 2000 RPM.
The PCB that is home to the jacks used for the cable management looks very clean and appears to be of good quality. This is better than some other PSUs where we've seen a huge amount of solder all over the place. The modular cable design also eliminates a lot of clutter from the insides of the PSU, particularly when done in this fashion using a PCB. Even if the resistance were to increase slightly because of the modular cable connections, the improved airflow may help to offset this. Only the 24-pin/ATX-12V connections have wires in the interior of the PSU enclosure.
The secondary side looks good as well. The cables attached to the PCB have small shrinking hoses on the end for protection if they loosen from the board. On the left side we can see a small chip on the PCB that includes the protection features of this power supply. It is a chip called PS223 from the Taiwanese company Silicon Touch Technologies. This kind of chip is used often by Enermax and we have never encountered any problems with its functions as well. It combines support for Over Voltage Protection, Under Voltage Protection, Over Current Protection, and Over Temperature Protection.
The Fan
The Liberty has a large 12cm fan installed that blows air onto the components and heatsinks. It's manufactured by Globefan, another company whose parts are often used in Enermax products. It can run at a nice low speed of under 1000 RPM, but when necessary it can spin at over 2000 RPM.
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swaaye - Saturday, August 4, 2007 - link
I've bought a few AX400s and an AX450. On the surface, they seem to be great PSUs. Very quiet with that 120 mm fan. I don't think they have very good efficiency. Newegg only says >65%. I would like to see a review of one of them as well.miahallen - Monday, July 30, 2007 - link
A8N-SLI DeluxOpty 165 @ 2.5GHz
8800GTX @ 621/999
4x SATA2 HDD
Antec P180b
I bought the Liberty 500W about a year ago and it has served me very well. I am very picky about noise, so I swapped the fan for a low noise Yate Loon model...best change ever. Now I cannot hear it at all!!!
It's interesting you mention good reliability, there seems to be lots of unhappy users on forums around the web having had problems with the Liberty series (mostly the 620W version from my experiance). I also replaced my 500W 6mo after purchase, but not because it failed, it just developed a rattle that drove me crazy. Enermax was very prompt at replacing it with a brand new one! Speaking of failures, I have a good friend who bought the 620W on my recommendation, and his blew up last week?! Whoops! Anyhow, thanks for the great review, you've endulged my confidence in the investment I made :)
JarredWalton - Monday, July 30, 2007 - link
So I'm not sure I understand... you bought the 500W and swapped the fan for a Yate Loon, but then the PSU developed a rattle and you got a new unit? I don't know what causes a rattle in a PSU, but usually it's the fan, which you had already replaced.... Since you had already opened it, wouldn't it have been easy to just fix the issue yourself? Or was there something else causing a rattle? (I'm also surprised any manufacturer would replace a PSU that you had opened to swap fans.)Anyway, one of the unfortunate aspects of PSUs is that a company can make an excellent product in one market and a lousy one in another. Sounds like the 500W Liberty might be great but the 620W has issues. I know I had a test system (from ABS) where a 620W failed during the two weeks of stress testing and benchmarks. They sent a replacement, which seemed to work fine, but long-term I couldn't say whether it was really stable.
xsilver - Monday, July 30, 2007 - link
just goes to show that old psu's are not outdated by any means.its funny that psu's are one of the few (only?) components that dont drop massively in price years after release.
is there a review of the corsair hx520 in the works? thats the psu that most people seem to be recommending for higher end systems and I feel will be the benchmark for performance/value
Final Hamlet - Monday, July 30, 2007 - link
What I am really longing for is the review of the new 1TB-F1 hard-drive by Samsung. Any ETA available?Thank you.
Le Québécois - Monday, July 30, 2007 - link
Any chance you could review one of the newer Enermax model from the Galaxy or Infinity series?Great PSU reviews btw, keep them coming !