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- Date:
- Thursday , July 16, 2009
- Author:
- Paul Johnson
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
Enermax Galaxy EVO 1250W Power Supply
When we buy new PSUs for ourselves here at HardOCP, a company that always makes our short list is Enermax. Its build quality and performance has been topnotch for years. Today we put its 1.25 kilowatt computer power supply to the test. Crash and burn or continue to shine brightly?
Overview
The first thing we are going to look at with the Enermax Galaxy EVO 1250W is the packaging, accessories, and documentation. While normally none of these items is a make or break item for a power supply the packaging quite often contains a lot of information about the product we are purchasing. The inclusion of an owner’s manual that provides actual information about our product is also of great help. Accessories are almost unnecessary with a power supply as the unit is self contained, unless it is modular, but there cases where a manufacturer can include useful accessories to make installation, routing and use more efficient.
As with the Enermax Revolution85+ 1050W we reviewed some time ago, the Galaxy EVO comes decked out in a mostly black, though now infused with some blue, packaging that is absolutely red giant like. The included printed information here is almost an exact replica of that which we saw with the Revolution and as such a lot of the information is useful including the power table (reproduced below), connector count, efficiency graph (which peaks at 89% at 230v, so we aren't going to be seeing that number today at 120v), plenty of marketing points, and 80Plus Bronze logo. Among these marketing points there are a large number we have covered before with various Enermax products but new features carrying over to this unit from the Revolution85+ are the zero load requirement on all rails, and the new 12-pin modular sockets for future connections. Moving on, we find that this unit is certified for CrossFire up to HD4870 X2 even though it is not advertised as such on the packaging and it certainly can support more than two video cards with its numerous PCI-Express connectors. On the efficiency side of things we find this unit is advertised as being 80Plus Bronze rated (and indeed the 80Plus website has the unit listed as such) which is a step down from the Revolution85+ but nothing to sneeze at. Lastly, the Galaxy EVO (like the Revolution before it) comes with a 3 year warranty which is still quite frankly a letdown. The marketing for this product is quite liberally covered in points about how this unit protects users and users’ components but yet it only has a 3 year warranty. While not the shortest we have seen, this seems shorter than we would expect from a unit so focused on quality and protection.
*8 pin PCI-Express Connectors are modified 6+2 style connectors with 2 extra grounds not 12v sense wires.
*Modular connector location is relative to the fixed wiring being on the left hand side of the unit.
From the power label supplied with the Enermax Galaxy EVO 1250W we see that this unit is another heavily 12v oriented unit as it has up to ~99% of its DC output capacity available on the 12v rails for a total of 104A. Interestingly, beyond the combined 12v capacity this unit is identical to the Revolution85+ 1050W we reviewed. I wonder why? Anyway, this 12v output is once more paired up with no less than eight PCI-Express connectors, sixteen SATA, and six Molex connectors; just like the Revolution85+ and as with that unit this arrangement should be sufficient for everyone and then some. The unit’s DC output is broken up into six 12v rails via OCP but the OCP cap for each rail is set at 30A which should easily be sufficient for the current (and near future) demands of anything that can actually be connected to each individual rail. Once more, it would seem hard to find any fault with the way this unit is laid out as even the single rail proponents are going to have a hard time finding the elusive "trapped power" or a way that a single rail unit will have more power available to any one component (that it actually could use that power in concert with all other components in a system) than with the Galaxy EVO 1250W (just as we saw with the Revolution85+ before it).
Once we open the Enermax Galaxy EVO packaging we are completely shocked (NOT!) to find two boxes, a pouch for modular cables, and the manual just like with the Revolution85+. Inside of those two smaller boxes is the power supply, the AC cord, the modular cables, mounting screws, and silica. The user manual for the Galaxy EVO is once more a hefty 60 pages long in eleven languages. Included in these pages is a wealth of information including the majority of the normal electrical specifications, warranty information, 12v rail layout, PowerGuard decoding information, cable count, installation instructions, and UPS compatibility and selection guide. Other than SilverStone, Enermax' manuals typically are some of the most genuinely useful and this one is no different, and indeed could simply be the same as the one shipping with the Revolution series units.