Enermax Liberty ECO 620 Watt Modular Power Supply

Every power supply manufacturer appears to be joining the 'green' revolution and Enermax is doing so with its Liberty ECO series of power supplies.  Enermax has been offering power supplies that feature excellent performance and reliability for many years now.  Today, we will be looking at the Enermax Liberty ECO 620 Watt version.  This model is 80Plus Standard certified. An 80% to 86% efficiency rating is claimed by Enermax. It is also NVIDIA SLi Ready and ATI Crossfire Ready.  

Upon opening the box, you will find the users manual, a power cable, modular cables, velcro straps, cable bag, and screws.

Here are some of the main features and specifications from Enermax's Website:

The Power Supply:

The power supply features a matte graphite black housing and fan grill, which looks great.  Note that the paint job on this power supply does not seem to be as good as the more expensive Enermax power supply models.  It feels a bit rough. 

Looking at the side of the power supply, there is a label with Enermax's logo on it, the model number and a condensed specification list.  Note that there are two +12v rails, each supplying up 30 Amps, which is great. The 3.3v supplies up to 24 Amps and the +5v supplies up to 24 Amps. The efficiency is 80 percent or greater at 20%, 50% and 100% loads.  According to the 80Plus website, this power supply has an average efficiency of 84.84% at typical loads (50% load) and an overall average efficiency of almost 83%.  This is becoming a standard for all power supplies and is great to see.

There is a large honeycomb style grill on the back which allows the 120 mm fan to exhaust hot air, an on/off switch and AC Power Input.  This power supply does feature Active PFC, so there is no need for a switch to select the input voltage.

This power supply features the following cables:

This power supply features a mix of hardwired and modular connections.   All of the connectors are clearly labeled.  The PCI-e cables utilize the red twelve pin socket, while the peripherals utilize the four black five pin sockets.

-A 24-pin ATX power connector

-A 4/8-pin +12v CPU/EPS Power Connector

-4x  6+2-Pin PCI-Express Power Connectors

SATA and Modular connectors are featured on the same cable.

-5x Molex Power Connectors

-8x Serial ATA Power Connectors

-1x Floppy Power Connector

Cooling:

There is a 120mm fan on the bottom of this power supply.  During testing, at idle loads, this fan is  very quiet, making very little to no noise.  This is  impressive. I'm glad that Enermax incorporated the PWM fan speed control technology, which is becoming more common with PSU manufacturers. With loads, the fan sped up a bit, making a light whirring sound, but the noise was still acceptable.

Inside the Power Supply:

* Taking this power supply apart will void the warranty. 

Inside the power supply,  there are two large black colored heat sinks, used to cool down the voltage rectifiers.  The main transformer is in the middle of the image, while the smaller transformer is below it.  The primary capacitors are Panasonic branded and rated at 85c, while the secondary capacitors are CEC branded, which is a brand that I haven't seen before, but appears to be common in Enermax power supplies. The PCB layout and board quality is pretty good, albeit being a little crowded.

The Panasonic (Matsushita) branded primary capacitors.

The secondary capacitors are CEC branded.

The fan inside is an Enermax branded fan. This is a high quality fan, featuring what appears to be a PWM power connector.   It has the model number EB122512H with a maximum draw of 0.3 Amps.

Testing:

For this power supply, the test system consists of the following:

-Antec Nine Hundred Two Case

-Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Quad Core Processor @ 3.4 GHz (1.40v)

-Xigmatek Dark Knight Heatsink w/120mm Thermaltake ISGC Fan

-eVGA nForce 780i SLi FTW Motherboard

-4GB (2GB x 2) of OCZ Platinum DDRII-1066 Memory

-640GB x 4 Western Digital Caviar Black 7200RPM / 32MB Cache Hard Drives

-2x nVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 (55nm) Video Cards @ 667MHz Core / 1053 MHz Memory

-Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Sound Card

-Lite-On 6x BD-ROM / 18x Asus DVD-RAM Drives

-4x 120MM fans, 1x 200mm fan

-2x CCFL Lights

(Multimeter Results)

*For additional / larger pictures of the Enermax Liberty 620 Watt , Click Here

*Voltages are at a 'Max Load' for a typical gaming computer, running Orthos, Sisoft Sandra Hard Drive benchmark and 3DMark06 CPU Test 1 and 2 / Deep Freeze HDR test, and read with a Multi-Meter.

Capacitor Brands (subjective rating):

Primary: Excellent

Secondary: Unknown

Primary: Panasonic

Secondary: CEC

Voltage Results:

+The results were excellent for this power supply, the results being well within range.  All rails remained quite strong.  There was some fluctuation in the voltages, but nothing serious or out of the test range. 

Stability Results:

+Everything ran fine during testing, the system was stable and performed the tests as expected. 

Fan Speed Impressions:

+During the tests, the fan was very quiet with idle loads and only produced a slight whirr with loads.  I was satisfied with how the fan performed.

Installation:

+Installation of this power supply went well.  There were no issues fitting it inside the test system's case.  Since this power supply is modular, the interior of the case was much neater because unneeded cabling can be put away.

Conclusion:

This power supply would be ideal for anyone looking to build multi CPU core gaming / workstation system with two or more moderately powered video cards.  This power supply is nVIDIA SLi Ready and is certified to be able to run up to two GeForce 7900GTX 's in SLi.  I'm sure it can handle most of nVIDIA's other GPU's in SLi as well. I was really impressed with how quiet the fan was upon starting up my system.  It is nearly inaudible, which is great for users who want to build quiet computing systems.  It is also 80Plus Standard certified.  At around $150, this power supply is priced inadequately for its wattage rating.  The Corsair HX620, is currently priced at $140 and at $100 with a rebate.  Overall, this is an excellent 600-650 watt class power supply.  The Enermax Liberty ECO 620 Watt should be purchased by anyone looking for moderate efficiency, low noise, great output performance, and great build quality in a power supply.

Pros +

-Great power output

-Three Year Warranty

-Very quiet fan

-80Plus Standard certified

-Modular

Cons -

-Expensive, too costly for its wattage rating

-Not as high quality as other Enermax power supplies

Techaddicts.net would like to give this power supply an Excellent rating

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