Enermax ELT500AWT Liberty PSU Review

Product : Enermax ELT500AWT Liberty power supply
Reviewer : Jon ?Bob The Junkie? Aubrey
Reviewed on : 24th May 2006
Product cost : $109.99 (?86.42, ?71.35)
Product provided by : Enermax

Introduction

You can?t seem to swing a cat now-a-days without hitting a modular
power supply. Everyone has one, and for good reason, they make messy
unneeded cables in your windowed case a thing of the past. If you?ve
got a side window in your case then you?ll know how much of a pain it
is to hide unsightly power cables that aren?t connected to anything.
Today we?re reviewing another modular power supply, the ELT500AWT
Liberty from Enermax. This is one of three in the Liberty series, the
others being the 400W model and the huge 620W model. So does this one
have anything to separate it from all of the others out there on the
market? We?re about to find out.

{mospagebreak title=Contents of Product}

Contents of Product

Contained in the ELT500AWT box are the following items:

One Enermax ELT500AWT Power Supply
One AC power cord
One user manual
Four Philips headed case screws
One cable pouch
Two PCI-E power cables
Two non-floppy modular cables (2 x Molex, 2 x SATA each)
Two inc-floppy modular cables (2 x Molex, 2 x SATA, 1 x floppy each)

{mospagebreak title=Specifications}

Specifications

Power Output

Peak. Power:	500W
+3.3V	+5V	+12V1	+12V2	-12V	-5V	+5VSB
28A	30A	22A	22A	0.6A	3A	3A

 

Technical Specs:

Input Power: 100 ~ 240 VAC, 50- 60Hz 7.5 ? 3.5A
Switches: Power switch on PSU and ATX logic control
Supports ATX/BTX/PCI Express/SATA and Dual Core systems
Protected by: OCP, OVP, UVP, OLP, SCP, OTP, Active PFC
80% power efficiency
Full support for Dual Core systems
Dual split 12v Rails
Intelligent fan speed control 

{mospagebreak title=Packaging}

Packaging (4 / 5)

The ELT500AWT comes in a white and grey cardboard box which is covered in information about the power supply, as well as two pictures of the unit itself. Information on the box includes its features and the input and output voltages it can take.

Upon opening the box you?re greeted with a pouch for holding the modular cables when they aren?t being used in your system, and the user manual. This pouch is a fantastic idea by Enermax, I?ve lost track of the amount of times I?ve built a system, come back to it a few months later to fit another component and then had to go scrabbling around in my ?box of computer junk? to try to find the rest of the modular cables I need to power the component. With the pouch you can keep all of your cables together in a easily recognisable case. The power supply unit sits at the bottom of the box covered in bubble wrap to stop it getting scratched, which is then covered in a cardboard protector. The AC power cord and the Philips screws, lay at the bottom of the box. 

{mospagebreak title=Noise}

Noise

The Enermax ELT500AWT follows the same route for cooling as many of the other power supplies on the market, using one large 120mm fan to suck air into the unit, instead of two smaller 80mm fans, one to suck air in and one to blow it out. This has the benefit of being able to rotate at slow speeds but still be able to push a large volume of air through the supply, making it very quiet when running. Unfortunately the single fan does have disadvantages, one of them being that because there is no active fan on the back to draw air out of the supply, dust accumulates faster in a single fan power supply, than in a dual fan.

Instead of adding a fan control dial on the back of the ELT500 AWT, such as the EG465AX-VE has, Enermax have decided to include a control wire which can be attached to the motherboard. This enables software monitoring of the fan.

Under testing, the noise from the Liberty was very low, from start up to heavy load during the benchmarking. This is a major plus as although in a standard system you?re unlikely to hear the power supply over the graphics card and processor fans, you may hear it in a quieter system such as a water cooled or acoustically dampened system. 

{mospagebreak title=Looks}

Looks (4.4 / 5)

The ELT500 AWT comes in a reflective black colour which would look good in any lit case, although finger prints also display effectively well. A gold coloured circular fan guard keeps fingers and cables from damage in the 120mm fan, which itself is covered by a golden sticker displaying the Enermax name.

Enermax have included two main venting points to allow airflow from the fan to cool the power supply and exhaust hot air out of the case. The first of these is a honeycomb grill design at the back of the case to allow air flow from the fan with as little resistance as possible. The second is a set of vents at the front of the unit next to the cables.

The 120mm fan is made from clear plastic so it is possible to see right through it to the gold heat sink inside.  

The cables in the ELT500 AWT are braided in an attractive black and gold braid which matches the colour scheme of the main unit. Although the braiding makes the cables thicker and more difficult to bend around it does make the inside of the case much more attractive. Each cable is terminated in a black plastic block which houses gold connectors.

The sockets for the modular cables to plug into on the power supply unit itself come in two colours. Red sockets are used for the PCI-E power cables, designed to power high end graphics cards. Black sockets are used for all other type of power connector.

Overall there are eight sockets, two red and six black, and unless you are running a lot of devices in your system, most of these will not be used. 

{mospagebreak title=Cabling}

Cabling (4.2 / 5)

Where as most manufacturers who make modular power supplies supply them with a whole plethora of cabling, Enermax have decided to take the opposite route with the Liberty, and only supply a few cables with loads of connectors on them.  The theory behind this is that most of your devices in the system that require power (CD/RW, HDDs, Floppy drive, etc) will be located in the same place in your system, so instead of running several cables to the same place in the case, you might as well only run one cable that has all of the needed connectors on it, and make the case look tidier.

This is a great idea in theory, but in practice, it runs into problems. The most major one of these being an over abundance of cables in one area. Having many connectors on one cable is fine if you have a lot of devices in your system, but if you only have one CD-ROM and a single hard drive and they are located in separate areas of your case, you?re still going to have to run two cables, and each of these cables is going to have at least three connectors dangling into the case looking unsightly.

Not all the cables in the Liberty are modular. The 24pin ATX connector is fixed to the power supply, with the additional 4 pins attached to the main 20pin block by a small plastic clip, so it can be snapped off for older motherboards. The dedicated 12v cable comes as an 8pin block which can be split into two 4pin connectors. The Liberty also has a small cable for monitoring the speed on the 120mm fan from your motherboard.

This design is followed by most manufacturers, the theory behind is going that all computers are going to require a ATX cable, and so if everyone requires it, why make it modular? Unfortunately the same problem applies to this design as the problem above. If you?re using an older motherboard with only a single 12v cable needed for the CPU, you?re going to have two additional 4pin cables dangling in the case looking ugly and serving no function.

{mospagebreak title=Performance}

Performance (4.7 / 5)

Test setup

• Antec Titan Server Case
• 2 x 120mm case fans
• 1 x 80mm case fans
• 2 x 4 inch cold cathode lights
• 1 x 12 inch cold cathode light
• Zalman 7000alcu heat sink fan
• AMD Athlon 3000+ (Socket 754) at 2152Mhz at 1.55volts
• MSI Neo FIS2R motherboard
• Crucial X850XT 256MB PCI-E graphics card
• 1024MB Kingston Hyper X PC3500 at 2.75v
• 2 x Maxtor DiamondMax 7200RPM drives (SATA) in RAID 0
• 1 x Maxtor DiamondMax 7200RPM drive (PATA)
• 1 x CD/RW drive
• 1 x DVD-ROM drive

Testing procedure:

All case lights and fans were turned on to their maximum settings. Cool ?n? Quiet was turned off so that the CPU was constantly running at 2152Mhz at 1.55 volts. The following tests were all run at the same time to ensure all devices on the system were drawing maximum power.

• Prime 95 was set to torture test the RAM (Stressed the RAM)
• ATI Tool was set to scan for artefacts (Stressed the Graphics and Processor)
• A 700MB file was transferred from the CD/RW drive to the Maxtor PATA drive (Stressed the CD/RW drive)
• A 3GB file was transferred from the DVD drive to the Maxtor RAID drives (Stressed the DVD drive)
• A 10GB file was transferred from the Maxtor RAID drives to the Maxtor PATA drive (Stressed the hard drives)

Voltage measurements were taken using an analogue multimeter. For comparison measurements from a Q-Tec 550W dual fan power supply were also taken with this setup.

Q-Tec 550W:

Idle
+3.3V	+12V	+5V	-12V	-5V	+5VSB
3.33	Easy AdSense by Unreal 11.92	5.0	-11.79	-5	5.46

Under Load
+3.3V	+12V	+5V	-12V	-5V	+5VSB
3.31	11.80	4.95	-11.79	-5	5.46

Enermax ELT500AWT 500W:

Idle
+3.3V	+12V	+5V	-12V	-5V	+5VSB
3.3	12.10	5.05	-11.85	-5	5.45

Under Load
+3.3V	+12V	+5V	-12V	-5V	+5VSB
3.33	12.07	5.04	-11.80	-5	5.44

Unfortunately we didn?t have the hardware available to stress the 500W Liberty to its maximum performance. However the testing machine we did test it with, is a good representation of an average user?s system. A single middle of the range graphics card, average processor (overclocked), a gigabyte of RAM and a few hard drives.

The Liberty 500W barely fluctuated when put under load, which as any overclocker will tell you, is a very good thing. We have heard of users who have put this power supply under heavy load though and reported the same thing as us, the power supply stayed consistent under load.

{mospagebreak title=Warranty and Conclusion}

Warranty

It?s a sad fact of things, but sometimes components just die before their time is due. This can be caused by faults in the manufacturing process, shipping knocks, of simply environmental changes, but at the end user level, it makes no difference how it died, just that it?s dead, and you?re stuck with a very expensive paper weight.

Enermax supply a three year warranty on the ELT500AWT so if for some reason it does kick the bucket, you?ll be sure your hard earned cash won?t be going down the drain.

Conclusion

Once again Enermax have produced a power supply you would be proud of to have in your system. At 80% efficiency you won?t be paying a small fortune to run it either, which is a major plus in my books. Its great having a beast of a PC, but if it costs you a small fortune to run it every year then next year you won?t be able to afford another upgrade. The modular cables look good and having a pouch to keep them in when not in use is a great idea by Enermax, it means you don?t have to keep the box to hand in case you wish to add another component to your system.

The black and gold colour scheme should suit any case, and with the modular cables, your case won?t look like a jungle if you?re not using all of them.

Overall Enermax have created another well made power supply with good performance, that wouldn?t look out of place in any case.

Scores

Packaging 4 / 5
Looks 4.4 / 5
Cabling 4.2 / 5
Performance 4.7 / 5

Final Score : 17.3 / 20

Pros

• Modular cables
• Software monitoring of the fan
• Looks good
• 80% efficiency

Cons

• Only supplied with four modular cables (and the two PCI-E ones)
• Multiple connectors on one cable can look messy

We would like to thank Paul Chung at Enermax for providing us with this product for review.