Review of the power supply Enermax Revolution DUO 700 W / Overclockers.ua

Enermax power supplies are not frequent guests on the pages of our site, so the new device that got to the test aroused a certain interest in us – after all, more than five years have passed since the last meeting with them. The Taiwanese company, along with Sea Sonic, has always been distinguished by advanced developments in its solutions and set the tone for other manufacturers. Enermax was one of the first to use a resonant converter and a synchronous rectifier in its energy efficient power supplies, but now these developments can be found even in affordable devices.

The tested model belongs to the Revolution Duo series and has an original, by today’s standards, cooling design using two fans. A similar scheme was popular in the past decade with passive PFC power supplies, but with the transition to active power factor correction and the advent of 120 mm turntables, it faded to nothing.

According to the developer, this design will improve the cooling of not only the power supply, but also drives installed under a common casing with the PSU by directing part of the air flow into the system unit.

There are three devices in the series, rated at 500, 600 and 700 watts, all of which meet the 80 Plus Gold energy efficiency requirements and lack the now-fashionable detachable cable feature. The older model was tested.

Enermax Revolution DUO 700W (ERD700AWL-F)

The block comes in a black box, which shows the device itself, the main technical characteristics and various advertising slogans.

In the kit, the user will find instructions, a set of mounting screws, several Velcro ties, a power cord and a velor case. Considering that the cables of the unit are not detachable, the last accessory is clearly to create a wow effect that you have purchased a real thing.

The number of cables and their length are as follows:

• one to power the motherboard (53 cm);
• one with an 8-pin (4+4) CPU power connector (59 cm);
• two with two 8-pin (6 + 2) connectors for powering a PCI-E video card (49.5 cm);
• two with four power connectors for SATA devices (40+15+15+15 cm);
• one with two power connectors for IDE devices and one FDD (43+15+15 cm);
• one with two power connectors for IDE devices (43+15 cm).

The wires, as befits famous products, are long enough, and the unit can be installed in almost any case without resorting to extension cords. All cables are encased in black nylon braid with white inserts.

The case of the ERD700AWL-F complies with modern trends and is made in black, even the fan grille on the outer wall does not stand out from the general style.

The fan speed controller is also located there, which activates automatic control in the minimum position, and in the maximum position brings it to full speed.

There are slots on the inner wall for some air to escape from the blowing fan, but they are partially covered, so its volume is not very large and is unlikely to play a significant role in the temperature regime of nearby drives.

In terms of its characteristics, the Revolution DUO 700W does not differ from modern competitors, in which the load power on the 12-volt line can almost correspond to the rating of the device. In this case, it is 696 watts. The combined power of the low-voltage channels is only 100 watts, which will be enough for today’s PCs.

For a voltage of -12 V, you can use a load of up to 3.6 watts, and + 5Vsb – 12.5 W, which is within modern standards.

The unit also has an active PFC and is designed to operate over a wide line voltage range. Of the declared protections, there are the following: from increased and decreased output voltage, from overload and short circuit, from mains voltage surges. There is an adjustment of the fan speed depending on the temperature inside the PSU.

Under the cover, we see a circuit that has already become a classic for “gold” devices based on a resonant converter in the high-voltage part and a synchronous rectifier in the low-voltage part. The Yue-Lin Electrical Technology platform is used.

The block is assembled well, there is nothing to complain about, only the board of the input filter does not look impressive on the outside. In general, the layout has become simpler compared to the old Enermax models.

The input filter was assembled without serious savings, part of it was placed on the same additional board, although there is enough free space on the main board.

The elements of the high-voltage part are cooled by a common radiator with good fins. The same, but slightly smaller, is used for the synchronous rectifier. It also has a temperature sensor.

It is controlled by the CM6901X block controller, the ICE2PCS01 chip is responsible for the active PFC – together with the ST9S313 supervisor, they are located on the back of the board. “Duty” is made on the chip A6059H.

On two separate scarves near the synchronous rectifier, there are DC / DC converters for +3.3 and +5 volt lines. They are controlled by PWM controllers APW7073.

The input capacitance is only 330 uF with an operating voltage of 400 V. Like all the electrolytic capacitors in the block, it is made by Teapo, which was not previously typical for Enermax. There are solid capacitances in the DC/DC converter zone.

Our high expectations regarding the quality of the soldering did not come true – if earlier the Taiwanese vendor was famous for the abundant amount of flux that was not washed off, then here, in addition to it, there are areas with missing varnish and manual intervention after the assembly line is visible.

Two fans are used to cool the ERD700AWL-F: a 100mm ED1002512L-OA intake fan and an 80mm ED0801512L-OA exhaust fan. Both are based on a magnetically suspended sleeve and are designed for a duty cycle of 160,000 hours. The connection is two-pin – finally, there are no proprietary connectors that were previously used, when in the event of a fan failure it would be difficult to replace it.

When the system is idle in automatic mode (minimum knob position), the 100mm fan spins at 593rpm, while the 80mm fan spins at 1195rpm. The noise level is quite comfortable. With an increase in load, the speed of the “turntables” increases to a maximum of 1100/2145 rpm, while there is no longer talk of silence. If you use manual adjustment, then the fan speed is about 1216–1234 and 2157–2185 rpm for the supply and exhaust, respectively.

Test Methodology

It is difficult to carry out full testing without an appropriate stand, so the power supplies were tested using a conventional system assembled from the following components:

• processor: Intel Core i7-6700K (4.0@4.5 GHz);
• motherboard: ASUS Maximus VIII Formula (Intel Z170);
• Cooler: Prolimatech Megahalems;
• RAM: HyperX HX430C15PB3K2/16 (2×8 GB, DDR4-3000, 15-16-16-35-1T);
• video cards: GeForce GTX 1080;
• drive: Kingston SSDNow UV400 240GB (240 GB, SATA 6Gb/s).

Testing was carried out in the Windows 10 x64 environment on an open stand. To create a gaming load on the system, the Valley benchmark was used with maximum graphics quality, and for additional load, LinX 0.6.7 was launched in parallel.

Also, for maximum load, the following system was assembled:

• processor: Intel Core i7-975 (3.33@4.02 GHz, Bclk 175 MHz);
• motherboard: ASUS P6T7 WS SuperComputer (Intel X58);
• cooler: Noctua NH-D14;
• RAM: Kingston KHX2000C8D3T1K3/6GX (3×2 GB, DDR3-2000@1750, 8-8-8-24);
• video cards: ASUS ENGTX295/2DI/1792MD3/A and Inno3D GeForce GTX 295 Platinum Edition (GeForce GTX 295);
• hard disk: Samsung HD502HJ (500 GB, 7200 rpm, SATA-II).

Here testing was carried out in the Windows 7 x64 HP environment on an open stand. To create a load on the system, the Tropics benchmark was used with activated anti-aliasing level 2x and anisotropic filtering 16x with LinX running with a 1280 MB task, while the video adapters worked in SLI mode. Another test was carried out with the launch of the OCCT v3.1.0 utility in full screen mode with a resolution of 1024×768, also in SLI mode.

To measure the total power consumption of the system, the Seasonic Power Angel was used, which can also measure the power factor, voltage and frequency in the network, the consumed current and the amount of energy spent per unit of time. Net power consumption calculated based on 80 Plus certification – i.e. possible efficiency of the device. Errors in such calculations can be 5%. The voltages were checked with a UNI-T UT70D digital multimeter.

In addition, we decided to slightly expand testing by taking temperature readings inside the power supply, fan speed.

The temperature was measured using the Scythe Kaze Master Pro panel, the sensors of which were located on the radiators inside the block and at a distance of 1 cm in front of the fan (#1) and behind the outer wall (#2).

For fan speed results, a UNI-T UT372 non-contact tachometer was used. The maximum speed was fixed for each of the power supply testing modes.

It should be borne in mind that such a technique at this stage is far from ideal and will be supplemented and changed as it is used.

Test results

The obtained data are entered in the table. In brackets for voltage are percent deviations from the norm, for power consumption – the approximate net load on the power supply.

An excellent power supply in all respects, which could withstand even a 20% overload. The overvoltage on all lines does not exceed 3%, while the spread is less than a percent, which is sometimes unattainable even for even more energy-efficient devices. Judging by the temperatures inside the unit, you can easily rely on automatic fan speed control.

conclusions

Enermax products have always been considered one of the benchmarks of quality and, together with Seasonic, have been the object of desire among enthusiasts. But the emergence of more affordable energy-efficient competing solutions is making adjustments to the manufacturer’s business model. It is unlikely that anyone will understand the reduction in the number and length of power cables, but a decrease in the level of the element base may well be suitable for devices designed for a wide range of users.

The reviewed power supply ERD700AWL-F of the Revolution DUO series can be described as an affordable solution from a well-known manufacturer, which, with comparable quality and price, has much better characteristics than products from second- or third-tier companies. A sufficient length of cables will not become a stumbling block when assembling in a large case, and the potential of the device will allow you to power a powerful gaming PC even with a couple of video cards. The original cooling system is unlikely to surprise lovers of silence, but to some extent it can improve the temperature regime of a large number of drives located under the casing along with the power supply. And only demanding users will prefer models of a higher class, of which Enermax itself and other manufacturers abound.