Published: March 18, 2009 | Source: Enermax | Author: James Napier

Enermax Liberty ECO 500w ATX PSU

Conclusion

As we continually stress to our forum members here at Overclock3D: “500w is more than enough power for almost all PC systems providing you pick a good PSU”. Judging by the results we’ve seen today that’s exactly what the Enermax Liberty ECO 500w is: a very good PSU.

During testing the Liberty ECO managed to hold some extremely tight voltages across all of its rails, with the +12v lines only dropping by 0.13v from idle to full load. Both the +3.3v and +5v rails also maintained good stability with a drop of 0.06v and 0.12v respectively. Only when applying a heavy crossload to the unit did things start to get a bit out of hand in Test 5 with the +12v rails shooting up to around 12.8v. However, as I’ve said many times before, this isn’t a situation that you are likely to ever come across on a normal PC, so it’s hard to give the Liberty ECO negative marks for this result alone.

Efficiency was also extremely reasonable with 84-85% being achieved under most loads. Sure there are PSU’s out there capable of maintaining 88-90% efficiency, but at present these units are extremely expensive – and let’s face it, it’s not until you start sucking really large amounts of power from the wall socket that a 3% efficiency difference would actually be noticeable.

Finishing off with the scope results conducted while the PSU was roasting away in our 50°C oven, I think its fair to say that these were outstanding. Ripple on the +12v rails never exceeded 20mV even when at full load, and similarly the results from the +3.3v and +5.0v were also among the lowest I’ve ever seen. Amazing.

At time of writing the Liberty ECO is only available at a limited number of UK based retailers. Scan is one of these few and has the 500w model listed at £85.47. This in all fairness, is at the top end of the scale for what I’d expect to pay for a 500w unit especially considering respectable PSU’s from manufacturers such as Seasonic, Silverstone and Cooler Master can be had for £65+.

The Good
– Excellent ripple results.
– Stable voltages, even under heavy load.
– Around 84-85% efficiency at most load levels.

The Mediocre
– Cable sleeving falls short of the cable length.
– Some dodgy voltage and ripple results in certain crossload situations.

The Bad
– 5 modular connectors on PSU, yet only 4 modular cables provided.
– Price quite high for a 500w unit.