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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
59 Comments
View All Comments
0roo0roo - Monday, February 15, 2010 - link
simple, to the point, should be done more.JFrizzle - Friday, February 12, 2010 - link
Where do you get the Enermax Modu 87+ 500W? I can only find the 700W on New Egg, and can barely find the 600W flavor. Have these items been released yet? If not, when is the expected release date?cupoftea - Sunday, January 24, 2010 - link
I would be really interested to see how this compares to another PSU from Germany, the Nesteq ASM X-Zero 500 semi-passive.KoVaR - Thursday, January 21, 2010 - link
Really nice PSUs, but a bit shame they come with three 12V rails instead of one "big one"ssj3gohan - Thursday, January 21, 2010 - link
To be brutally honest here, I would be very surprised to find more than one person in the pool of hardware geeks that are my friends that has a computer that, even under load, consumes more than 300W. Even really powerful gaming machines (say, core i7 + HD5870) usually draws around about 100W idle, and with recent developments usually even less than 80W (yes, really). Under load, these machines barely top 200W. You would need to do some serious skulltrailing to build something that needs 400 or 500W.For the serious gamer, a 350W PSU should be the norm - why you ask me? At idle, a single-processor, single-gpu machine uses about 20% of the PSU's rating, and that is where the serious efficiency benefit is for forward converter topologies. Right now, gamers use ridiculous 500+ W power supplies which leaves the PSU uselessly wasting energy at idle, where the computer is most of the time anyway.
This is by the way also one of the humongous errors made by various reviewers (not anandtech by the way) - they for instance try to test a C2D E5200 (extremely power-efficient) but decide to run it in their usual test bench which inevitably contains a power supply designed for overclocking. Then they're surprised that the E5200 seems to be no more efficient than a Q9600 or something, but in reality the E5200 system consumes so little that the PSU is hopelessly inefficient at that point. If you use this knowledge you can build machines that idle below 35W by just and only using a very low-wattage power supply (barring the truly high-end video cards of course)
7Enigma - Thursday, January 21, 2010 - link
I'll agree with you to an extent. The 700+ PSU's are more than overkill for most people. But keep in mind the longevity of the PSU. Most people do not like their PSU's running 80% of capacity when under load, and I constantly hear 60% as the sweet spot for long-life. We are now approaching a sort of saturation point for PSU efficiency so I don't see people buying a new PSU every single time they upgrade or rebuild. It was different when we were jumping from 50-60-70% efficiency. But going from 80-82-84-etc is not really that big (from both a utility cost and heat standpoint).These new PSU's are great in that they get very high efficiencies at anything pretty much above 20%. Other brands are also almost there (25-30%), so it's kind of moot. You're not going to see large price differences if they made 350 or 400w because the main cost is in design and manufacturing, not so much the difference between parts (some but not the bulk of the cost).
Christoph Katzer - Thursday, January 21, 2010 - link
http://geizhals.at/deutschland/a497624.html">http://geizhals.at/deutschland/a497624.htmlCheck out the street prices, the MSRP of the Modu87+ was 150€ and it's now already at 116€...
yyrkoon - Wednesday, January 20, 2010 - link
"Enermax posted this video on YouTube to show real life experiences and how they could be solved with CordGuard. We think it's dangerous to let kids play behind a PC in the first place, and let's just hope they don't notice the power switch…."Or do one of the more creative/inventive things kids have been known to do. Like perhaps try to stuff a peanut butter and jelly sandwich through the fan grill . . .
But right, I do not think any responsible parent is going to let their young kids play around with the power supply of a computer in the first place. I would think Enermax needs to work on their marketing a bit more . . . The video stinks, and screams "skiddy". CordGuard is not a terrible idea, but come on. Are they really trying to market a $.05 gimmick ? When did the name Enermax sink so low ?
Personally, I would like to see some aircraft quality (screw-on ) connectors for the removable power connections, and a plain black fan would be perfectly fine with me. Also, I agree that the name badge on the fan guard is not necessary. Yes, I *would* pay more ( fair price ) for the above mentioned connectors.
gwolfman - Wednesday, January 20, 2010 - link
Why is 115VAC so inefficient in comparison to 230VAC?ClownPuncher - Wednesday, January 20, 2010 - link
I can see the appeal, but for me a single 12v rail over 50a is ideal, rather than 3-4 rails.