Features
We've gone over some of the features earlier, but there are some interesting items worth noting. The two separate 12v rails will provide cleaner power to items that drain the most. In this case, it's the CPU and motherboard, and your hard drives. By separating them, you effectively remove one source of power drain from another. What does this mean for the end user? Overclocking is a power hog, and the last thing we need is a SCSI array taking power away from the CPU.
The Smart Fan technology is interesting, as the fans will continue spinning for about two minutes after the PC has been turned off. This will help remove any residual heat in your case and PSU, and less heat is always better. There is a preset of 40°C, so your actual time will vary, but in the Lian-Li it was about 90 seconds.
Finally, there is the manual and automatic fan speed control which we've already discussed.
Performance
ABIT KV8-Max3: AMD Athlon 64 3200+, 2 x 512MB Kingston HyperX Ram, ATI All-In-Wonder 9600 Pro, 80GB Western Digital, Windows XP SP1, ATI Catalyst 4.1, Koolance Exos-Al.
To test the PSU's performance, we'll be running our AMD Athlon 64 3200+, and at overclocked settings, which will be 2090MHz (10x209 @ 1.85v). System cooling was provided by 4 Tt Smart Fan 2s, spinning at "high". The Koolance Exos was also run at full speed.
To load up the system, we run Prime95 run for 20 minutes, with Folding @ Home running in the background, as well as the LoTR: Fellowship of the Ring DVD in the DVD drive.
Voltages were monitored with ABRA DM-9700 multimeter.
Stock Speeds
Overclocked Speeds
Very solid numbers throughout. Both the +5v and +12v rails had a slight drop when overclocking, and although the +5v rail remained over the baseline, there was a small dip with the 12v rail.
Final Words
Enermax put together a nice package here with the EG375P-SFMA Noisetaker PSU. The PSU works as advertised, and provides some good power to boot. The power remained over the specified ratings in almost all cases, except for the one drop during overclocking.
The aesthetic touches are nice as well, but not without a couple flaws. The braided sleeves are a welcome sight, but they did make the cables fairly stiff. I also found the cables to be a tad short, and for the enthusiast with multiple devices, there just aren't enough molex connections. With only five four pin connections, you're limited to two hard drives, two optical drives, and perhaps a fan or video card (such as the GeForce FX cards). If you have another case fan or two, or a third hard drive, you'll be forced to purchase a splitter. I do have SATA drives, so this won't be a problem for myself as this PSU has SATA connections, but for those who don't, you may want to consider this possible shortcoming.
At 375W, the PSU should suit most people's needs. We've always said that total Watts isn't everything, but in the case of 375W, if you're running a more power hungry system, we'd certainly suggest a beefier PSU, which Enermax offers in this product line.
Pros: Separate rails, and cable sleeves are a nice touch. Solid performance for the size.
Cons: Cables are a bit short, not enough four-pin molex connections, 375W may not cut it for today's enthusiast PC.
Bottom Line: The PSU we've looked at today retails for , so it falls somewhere in the middle for pricing, but it does offer some nice extras that make it worth your consideration.
If you have any comments, be sure to hit us up in our forums.
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