What's up with Enermax?

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SkaarjMaster

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I just suggested to someone to get an Enermax PSU at another forum and they responded back that their PSUs were getting bad reviews at newegg. Sure enough, they were right! I know my 550W and 431W Enermax PSUs are still going strong, but maybe their latest offerings aren't up to par. It seems a lot are either DOA or pop and fry people's systems. It's also possible some don't have enough amps on the +12V rails, which is odd because Enermax always had a little more than others in the past. I'm loyal to Enermax at this point, but my next system might have a different brand. Anyone know what's going on? :confused:
 
SkaarjMaster said:
Anyone know what's going on? :confused:
Click to expand...

Newegg filters reviews that are bad towards them....or improperly filled out.........but any "individual" can rate a product no matter if they could indeed find their bottom with a flashlight, two hands and a map.
 
Also keep in mind that those who have bad experiences are ten times more likely to voice an opinion than those who have good experiences.

People with good experiences rightfully expect everything to work the way it should, deliver on time, etc.

It's like at a particular forum I moderate. People don't come to the forum to tell me how they're not having any problems. They come to the forum because they're having problems. Unfortunately, people come in afterwards, see all of the negative posts and say, "Gee, this product really sucks. Look at all of the problems people are having."

Go figure.
 
The new liberty modular series they have released recently are the ones getting the bad reviews. More than likely people are quick to install them and don't check their wires to be sure all the modular plugs are fully plugged in before powering up their PC's causing the power supplies to fry. That's my best guess anyway.

I had recent issues with my Enermax SLI power supply though it simply wasn't pushing enough power through it's 12V rail. It was 2 years old though.
 
I recommended that my friend get an Enermax powersupply and then it fried on him a couple of weeks after he put it in. I kina felt dumb... it wasnt one of the modular PSU's either
 
To me it looks like that just screwed up the new line around the liberty PSUs around the 620 W, possibly assembling them in a factory which has idiots for QA.

But it is clear that their quality took a huge dive compared to the 535W times.
 
In any case, I'll be checking out some other brands as well next time. Possibly PC Power & Cooling, Silverstone, etc. I'm not going to just default to Enermax next time. Although I do like the long cords for my full-tower systems. :)
 
Well, I am on my 4th Liberty 620w, the other 3 all blew in different ways(cost me £30 total to Rma)! This one has been going strong for just over a week, so fingers crossed its the last! This is my first Enermax PSU (well 4th ;) ) and really only bought it (for a crossfire setup)on account of Enermax's good reviews. But seems my old Arctic 600 will be with me for a while yet just in case.......
 
wow its sad the new Enermax PSU's arent up to par.
I have a pretty old 430W enermax with only a 15A 12V rail.
After my new PSU had a fault I was forced to use this old PSU and found it works perfectly with a well overclocked A64 and X1800XT !!
(3000+ @ 2.7GHz, X1800XT @ 700/800)

The XT is specced as requiring 22A for your whole system on the 12V rail with default clocks.
I'm amazed this old PSU works with my kit and keeps the voltages within 3% of rated voltage while heavily abused!
(ATX specs state they need to be within 5%)

Maybe this will give you hope if you have an older 'Enermax.
 
I have a Liberty 600 and it's been flawless - love the sleeved cabling too. With power supplies, it's a crapshoot sometimes... but I've never had issues.
 
See sig.
I also use a Liberty 620W in a virtually identical MCE2005 system.
Both PSUs are stable and most important ... I can't hear them.
All models I've used from Enermax have been trouble free.
 
I had used an old Enermax 370W PSU on an x2-3800+, 6800GT (Volt Mod to ultra), 2 GB RAM, 2 HDD's and some other stuff. All rails still above the rated voltage (within 5%).

I have at least 1 even older Enermax that is still slaving away in one of my families' computers somewhere in Germany now.

But it's sad if their QA went down the pooper, since I would certainly have considered an Enermax PSU next time I need one.
 
I neither trust nor bother to read newegg reviews anymore. They are usually written by people who claim that their knowledge of the product is "high." I'm sure that a lot of the bad reviews are due to user incompetence, but oh well, at least we get perfectly functional and less expensive "refurbished" items. :p
 
It seems that sometimes motherboards can be picky about PSU's as well....Hopefully not to the point of frying one that it's incompatible with, however.

The Liberty and the DFI RS482 Infinity boards evidently have been experiencing some problems as of late...Not with everyone though.

Perhaps it is some sort of QC issue.
 
I have an Enermax Liberty 400W and its been excellent so far (knock on wood). I love the modular design and the sleeved cabling. It's pretty much silent too. If I have to get another PSU for my other computer, I'll stick with Enermax.
 
Ive got a 4XX series Enermax, powering water cooling, 3500+ (Oced) and 6800 gt (Oced). Its been an amazing PS so far.

The issue is I am building a SLI rig so looking for a new PS; and am bummed out to learn that many people are having issues with Enermax. When I bought this last year (1.5 years ago) enermax was THE power supply to have.

Amazing how quickly that can change! But I do love my old PS.

-Kharz
 
I'm on my first Liberty 620W and uhhh, it's amazing.

I'd just like to give a shout out to my boys down in Taoyuan City, Taiwan (Enermax HQ), that uh...made this all possible.
 
My old Enermax 550w powered my water cooled Northwood rig for a few years without so much as a hiss of a problem. I chose a new Liberty 620w for my SFF and thus far I've not had any problems with it. Knock on wood.
 
That is a shame to hear. I was planning on getting an Enermax for my next build. Hopefully everything will be good by then. My current PSU is a 4 year old Enermax Whisper 350. It has been on pretty much constantly the whole time, with zero problems. The system is my oc'd 3500+ system.
 
Evil said:
I had recent issues with my Enermax SLI power supply though it simply wasn't pushing enough power through it's 12V rail.
Click to expand...

I have this EXACT same problem on my 500w model.
In the BIOS I watch the power on the 12V flucttuate from 12.10 all the way down to 11.83
 
fluctuations are very normal behaviour from monitoring in the BIOS/Windows.
The voltages you are seeing are a small fluctuation and nothing worth worrying about.
PC's are designed to withstand up to 10% voltage fluctuation (unless very noisy) and the ATX spec states voltages must remain within 5% of rated voltage.

If you really want to know whats going on use a multimeter.
Even then, in this case your PSU voltage/fluctuation is perfectly fine and EASILY within the ATX specs.
 
Two things...

1. I recommended Enermax to a friend about 3 yrs ago when I was a fanb0i of that company and his had a fan die on it shortly after purchase *sigh*

2. I am now a PC P&C fanb0i I guess. I have read that PC P&C says that modular PSUs in general are bad bad bad! They claim that after a year or so, that you will see them start to die mysteriously. Something to do with the added resistance with modular cabling, etc.

Just order a PC P&C with a custom cable harness ;)
 
I wondered whether modular PSU's would result in lower reliability.
Some of the power will be dissipated as heat in the resistance of the extra connections but some of the power will be reflected back into the output stage of the PSU (due to impedance mismatch of the connection) resulting in slightly higher operating temps of the PSU output stage.
In adverse conditions when a bad connection is made, the above problem will be worse.
Any power that is lost or reflected back will not be going to the graphics card so the graphics card is likely to not quite get the full 12V the PSU can supply.

Having more connections points per psu lead will enhance the problem, reducing the voltage at the graphics card slightly more.
The more power is taken through the same lead to other devices plugged in on the same power lead, the more losses will occur at the first connection nearest the PSU AND the more power will be reflected back to the PSU.
Its wise to make sure nothing else is plugged in on the same lead (ie no power splitters).
 
Enermax PSU's are fantastic. People come to online forums/review sites to complain because they feel the need for attention. For ever bad review I'd wager there are two to three times as many happy users.
 
AppaYipYip said:
Enermax PSU's are fantastic. People come to online forums/review sites to complain because they feel the need for attention. For ever bad review I'd wager there are two to three times as many happy users.
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2-3 people?

Try hundreds.

Defect rates are only 2-3% max on most electronics (unless it's the PS2).
 
As was mentioned earlier, most of the people who post reviews about products have had bad experiences; and this effect is amplified when a product is more popular.

For example, there was a massive sticky on these forums a while back that was simply devoted to covering the problems with the A7N8X nf2 motherboards. From reading those reviews, you would think that the A7N8X is trash, when it is, in fact, one of the best nf2 boards available.

Because it is the best, it is also extremely popular and gets a lot of bad reviews as a result.

It's no different with Enermax. I'm quite certain that they still are a very reputable company; it's just that their growing popularity is starting to result in these reviews.
 
I own two Enermaxes, both of which are working fine.

Maybe it'd be nice to start a PSU reliability guide like StorageReview's HDD reliability guide? Any thoughts?

 
unhappy_mage said:
I own two Enermaxes, both of which are working fine.

Maybe it'd be nice to start a PSU reliability guide like StorageReview's HDD reliability guide? Any thoughts?
Click to expand...

There's a decent list in the faq, were you thinking something along those lines?
 
Have you tried the SR reliability guide? It's not about recommendations, it's about real-world data on what people are doing with their drives and what they experience in terms of failure. So all this widget would need to do is take input from people - "I started using this model PSU in this month, and I used it for seven months before upgrading", or "I bought this two weeks ago and it failed", etc, and determine from that what the average life for that model is and display a sorted list by manufacturer, by model, whatever.

It'd also give us something to point to when people say "But my Raidmax works fine!"... :p

 
wow.. I have had my Noisetaker 701 and Liberty 620 since they were released w/out any problems... the computers w/ those ps's are used a lot too..
 
unhappy_mage said:
Have you tried the SR reliability guide? It's not about recommendations, it's about real-world data on what people are doing with their drives and what they experience in terms of failure. So all this widget would need to do is take input from people - "I started using this model PSU in this month, and I used it for seven months before upgrading", or "I bought this two weeks ago and it failed", etc, and determine from that what the average life for that model is and display a sorted list by manufacturer, by model, whatever.

It'd also give us something to point to when people say "But my Raidmax works fine!"... :p
Click to expand...

Heh, nope, never used it. Sounds like a good idea, though.
 
unhappy_mage said:
Have you tried the SR reliability guide? It's not about recommendations, it's about real-world data on what people are doing with their drives and what they experience in terms of failure. So all this widget would need to do is take input from people - "I started using this model PSU in this month, and I used it for seven months before upgrading", or "I bought this two weeks ago and it failed", etc, and determine from that what the average life for that model is and display a sorted list by manufacturer, by model, whatever.

It'd also give us something to point to when people say "But my Raidmax works fine!"... :p

Click to expand...

Problem with those types of rating systems is that people with bad experiences speak louder than those with good experiences. So someone like Antec that sells about 50K units per year (total guess) and 500 complaints, sounds worse than someone like Aerocool that sells about 10K units per year but only has 200 complaints. :(
 
I have the Liberty 500 powering a really thirsty sli/dual core system. It's the best damn psu I've had, 6 months running hardcore and cool.

My systems also shows a drop to 11.83 but runs fine despite everything being vmodded and peaking at 470 watts at times.
 
scwam said:
I have the Liberty 500 powering a really thirsty sli/dual core system. It's the best damn psu I've had, 6 months running hardcore and cool.

My systems also shows a drop to 11.83 but runs fine despite everything being vmodded and peaking at 470 watts at times.
Click to expand...
sweet. I too have a dual core and its good to know its working great.
 
I just rma'ed a DOA Liberty 400W last week. I just got the replacement in the mail today and it's looking like I'll have to RMA again. Just my luck...
 
Any PSU that gets the knod from JonnyGuru is good enough for me.

I gave this a good read before buying my PSU http://www.jonnyguru.com/PSU/ELT620AWT/ELT620AWT.html

I haven't gotten any of the popping noises on start up.

The only downsides were "Not liking the "Eternity" cables all too much. SATA and Molex should've been on separate cables on a modular power supply."

The cables ended up being just what I wanted.

The other thing he mentioned that he didn't like were the looks. Personally, I love how it looks and have trouble not tearing the case open to show it some lovin'.

Bottom line is that Enermax makes some great power supplies and that even a good company has defects (which are especially noticeable when the company is popular).
 
Back in ye olden days of computering (98-00) Enermax was the mac daddy of reasonably priced high quality power supplies...seems that the past few years other makers have caught up and surpassed them though. I know of an old 300w Enermax (about 6 years old) that is still running fine in a system I built for someone years ago.
 
I had a bad Enermax PSU. It was a complete pain. On a new build it is hard enough to troubleshoot all the issues and then shut down because of a dead power supply. They are heavy to and expensive to RMA back.
 
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