OCWorkbench - Review of the Enermax EG431P-VE PSU

SPEC/Model number				EG431P-VE
I/P	Voltage Rating			90V~135V AC or 180V~265V AC (selected by slide switch)
	Iin=115/230Vac			12A/7A
	Frequency			47Hz~63Hz
	Inrush current			40A max./115V; 80A max./230V (at cold start)
O/P	DC Voltage	Ripple & Noise	Total Reg.	Output current rating MIN/MAX
	3.3V	50mV	+/-4%	0A / 35A
	+5V	50mV	+/- 5%	8A / 44A
	+12V	120mV	+/- 5%	3A / 15A
	-5V	50mV	+/- 10%	0A / 1A
	-12V	120mV	+/- 10%	0A / 1A
	+5Vsb	50mV	+/- 5%	0A / 1.8A
	3.3V & +5V			220W
	Total O/P			431W
Hold up time				17ms min. at 230V AC full load
Over Power Protection				105%~160% of max load
Over Voltage Protection				+5V: 5.6V~6.9V; +3.3V: 3.7V~4.5V
Efficiency				70% min. at full load
Cooling				Air convention by +12V DC fan
Operation Temperature				0C~25C for full rating of load, decrease to zero Watts O/P at 70C
Storage Temperature				-20C ~ 80C
Humidity				Operating: to 85% relative humidity, non-condensing at 25C; Storage: to 95% relative humidity, non-condensing at 50C
MTBF				100K hours at 25C, 70% full rated load
EMC				EN 55022 Class B; FCC Class B; IEC 801-2, 3, 4, 5
Dimensions				W150 x H86 x D140 (mm)

As we can see everything is how one would expect for a PSU rated at 431W. Goods news extends to the 3.3V and +5V lines. These both give 35A and 44A respectively. If you need more than this then you seriously are loading your system upto the max. To give you a comparison an average Macron Power 300W (Model MPT-301) PSU which is also AMD certified generates 14A and 30A respectively. This calculates to 160W for both 3.3V and +5V lines combined. The EG431P-V rewieved here does 220W which shows how powerful this PSU is for all but the most demanding of envionments. In this model the +12V line is rated at 15A. If you remember back to the EG351P-V it was 12A. So here we're seeing a whole 3A more. In other words thats 25% more as 12/3 = 4 and 100/4 = 25. Providing you're not thinking of some ultra power draining peltier unit I think it's safe to say this should be enough. If not then you will have to check out our review of the flagship model, the awesome EG651P-VE.

In operation this PSU doesn't give too much indication you have it installed. The fans are almost as quiet as a mouse producing this delicate hum when running. I would definetly say it's a nice sound, no way would I think it's getting ready to lift off as some fans give the impression of (especially if you have many all working at once). This is a nice touch, providing you don't have any other fans or hard disks running that is. If you do then you'll be hard pushed to notice how quiet this PSU is. Enermax told me they have specially reduced the speed of the fans on user demand. However this is good, perhaps we'll have some quieter hard disks in the future. Maybe I am over doing it with that comment as I have more than one hard drive. Even so I would go as far to say that one hard drive can also produce more noise polution than this PSU so the problem will remain evident for a wide spectrum of users So with what I have said concerning the fans both here and before in this review they fulfill their reason of being well and are unlikely to cause any headaches.

We checked the PSU's voltage output to see how well they corespond to the perfect +5V or -12V rating. Keeping in mind you will never get spot on readings due to eletrical fulctuations and so the nearer they are to perfect the better the PSU's eletrical capabilities. As with all the Enermax PSU's they were tested in the following system:

As not all devices require power all the time those that do have been mentioned above. For example hard drives spin all the time consuming power whereas a DVD ROM will just sit in stanby mode unless you put in a CD or DVD disc. Processors always need power and as they're are two here it gets more hungry. RAM doesn't require a lot of power but nevertherless a weak signal might cause memory errors. The RAM was set to 2-2-2 and a leadoff of 3. We didn't expect this PSU to cause our RAM to crash but just to give it more of a a chance we set the most extreme RAM timings possible. This system performed well with a Macron power AMD approved PSU rated at 300W so it was more or less certain the Enermax EG431P-VE would also pass without any hiccups. Anyway, enough of my chit chatting, lets see what readings we got:

As can be seen from the above table, the EG431P-V is doing a good job. I MUST state though that there are no system fans running apart from those in the PSU itself. Therefore the only fans running in the system are on the Slot 1 CPU's. A small CPU fan as found on most coolers consumed around 0.18-0.24A. This isn't a lot so the +12V line remains well above it's spec. Bigger fans will obviously consume more. I don't speculate any real problems here.