Enermax Gold: Modu87+ and Pro87+
by Christoph Katzer on January 19, 2010 1:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
A look Inside
When opening this unit we couldn't really see anything different inside than you'd see in other power supplies. If you take a closer look you will find a few differences though. In fact this unit uses some of the same technology as Seasonic does in their latest X-series. Enermax's so called Dynamic Hybrid Transformer technology, part of the "resonant topology", is nothing more than a kind of gearbox for the components. This way Enermax can regulate the voltage that goes into the capacitor ranging from roughly 330V to 400V. If the load on the DC output is low the voltage to the capacitor will be lower as well, resulting in better efficiency. The same goes for the frequencies which will be decreased with higher loads and increased when the DC load is lower.
In the secondary part we see two "DC to DC" sister PCBs where the 5V and 3.3V rails are created. Below these two sister PCBs we find capacitors attached to another PCB vertically. Enermax actually carries a patent for this arrangement which is space saving and enhances the cooling of the attached components. Oh and don't mention the blue heatsinks. They do look strange inside a black and golden schemed power supply, but as you can remember back at Computex the housing was still dark matte black with a red fan installed. It made sense at the time and Enermax unfortunately had already produced all of the heatsinks and were unable to change those when the new look was introduced. For component geeks, there is a Rubycon capacitor in the primary and a lot of Nippon Chemi-Con caps in the secondary. The solid-state caps are made in Taiwan, though.
The overall quality is as we would expect from Enermax, but they still managed to top former achievements. As they previously worked with PCBs made of synthetic resin bonded paper (FR-2), things always looked a little shabby inside. With the new multi-layer PCB it all looks much cleaner and adds a huge percentage of quality to the units.
The Fan
Since Enermax bought its own fan company a while ago they started producing a wide range of funky fans. Together with their twister bearing they have come up with some pretty good fans lately and are in fact able to diversify the product ranges according to their actual needs. In the case of the Modu87+ and Pro87+ for example Enermax wanted a larger fan; 140mm is the largest possible in an ATX power supply today and it's already patented, so Enermax decided to make a 139mm fan themselves. Together with golden blades this fan looks truly amazing, and we are happy that there aren't any LEDs. The fan carries the model number EA142512W-OAB. Enermax also worked on the Hall-IC inside the fan and made it possible to run the fan at incredibly low RPMs, which we will see later.
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rbarone69 - Tuesday, January 19, 2010 - link
I'm sure you're room temp isnt 50 degrees celsius... (122f)rbarone69 - Tuesday, January 19, 2010 - link
Sorry guys, didnt see you actually put it in an environment at 50c. (should read better before commenting)Just curious why you picked such a high temp to test. Do you find that there are cases this warm in rooms with no A/C?
JarredWalton - Wednesday, January 20, 2010 - link
It's a stress test to simulate a hotter case; if a PSU can handle 50C, it can easily handle the more common 30-35C.Christobevii3 - Tuesday, January 19, 2010 - link
Could you hook up some different power supplies and show the difference they draw from the wall versus these at idle and load with a basic quad core, 4GB ram, two hard drive, and 5870 setup? I'm curious if spending $50 more on a power supply is going to actually make that big of a difference over a year of computing cost wise for electricity.- Tuesday, January 19, 2010 - link
In most cases it's better to keep your current PSU rather than buy a new one. Sometimes if you have a very inefficient unit it's worth the upgrade. If you already have a plain jane 80plus PSU, then it would be a waste of cash to upgrade.For instance lets say your PC idles at 100w DC from the board. We will use a 500w power supply for an example.
Your plain jane 500w 80plus PSU idles at 80% efficiency and the fancy gold one idles at 87% efficiency. If you calculate it to the wall for the plain jane 100w/.8= 125w, the gold one is 100w/.87= ~115w. So we have a difference of 10w. If we calculate the idle power difference over a year at .10 per kwh then: ((10w*24*365)/1000) * .10 = $8.76 saved per year with your PC on 24/7.
If you bought a 500w gold unit say at newegg for $100 just to upgrade (and the braggin' rights) it would take you over 11 years to recoup your $100 idling your PC 24/7. I can see many peeps will proudly display their gold unit signature. :) Let's see if they keep their PSU for 10 + years!
If you were going for a new build and trying to decide whether to go for a plain jane 80 plus at $50 or the fancy gold one at $100 (for a difference of $50) it would take over 5 1/2 years to recoup your $50 idling 24/7. For some this might be reasonable depending on the price of electricity in their area, and how much they actually use their PC. If you don't use your PC a whole lot, the plain jane 80 plus will most likely be good enough.
Kibbles - Friday, January 22, 2010 - link
Don't forget the extra heat needs to be cooled during summers.But I agree, the savings is small especially since most people don't idle 24/7.
jasperjones - Wednesday, January 20, 2010 - link
Who pays $0.10 per kwh? Is that residential? I'm in NYC and pay ~$0.20.Calin - Wednesday, January 20, 2010 - link
Upgrade only if you have issues:*the air blown by the PSU is too hot
*computer is finicky (bad quality PSU could be the reason)
*you (actually) need more wattage
*your PSU is noisy, and you want a silent one
As seen in the page, one of those expensive PSU will happily provide you 15% or more power above nominal (no mention of the efficiency though, but it should probably be higher than 80%), while a low quality power supply might give you out-of-range voltages when reaching 90% load (or maybe even less than that)
beginner99 - Wednesday, January 20, 2010 - link
And not to mention that the fabrication of the PSU also consumes energy. If you throw away ur old 80% PSU that is still working to buy this one you are actually wasting energy. It's the same with cars. Manufacturing of a car (creating the steel, plasitics,...) consumes more energy than it will ever use while it's actually running. So trading in your old one for a new one is wasting energy.Main reason to buy this PSU is because of low noise. Efficient = less heat = lower fan speed = quieter. Simple.
Makaveli - Tuesday, January 19, 2010 - link
I also would like to see a PSU round up maybe in march time frame... :)I'm still sitting pretty with my Enermax Infinity 720 Watts right now, and you do make a good poing about Enermax PSU prices not dropping much.