Enermax Revolution85+ 950w Modular PSU

 

Much like its predecessor the Galaxy and many other of Enermax’s modular PSU’s, the Revolution85+ is hybrid-modular in design. This means that several of the essential cables required to power a basic PC system have been hard wired into the unit. This reduces the chance of poor connections or increased resistance due to an ill fitting modular plugs, but can come at the cost of having additional cables to ‘hide’ should you be a neat PC freak. As we can see from the images below, the 950w version of the Revolution85+ is fitted with 1x 24-Pin ATX, 2x 6+2Pin PCI-E, 1x EPS12v and 2x 4-Pin P412v connectors.

 

 

 

On the modular side, the Revolution85+ is fitted with a total of 10 connectors: six Black in 5-pin format and the remaining four Red in 10-pin format. Enermax claim that the 10-pin modular connectors will be useful for future changes in hardware, but in all honesty I’ve yet to see a manufacturer release updated cables for their modular PSU’s to support new standards.

 

As you may have already guessed the black connectors positioned nearest the middle of the unit  are a used for powering Molex/SATA devices, while red connectors are used solely for PCI-E graphics cards. 

 

 

 

Given the Red + Black colour scheme of the Revolution85+ I would have put money on Enermax updating their cable sleeving with Red weaving instead of the traditional Gold. Unfortunately that’s a bet I would have soon lost as Enermax have unfortunately cheaped-out and used the same sleeving as on all of their other units.

 

Another thing which is quite unsightly is the splitting of some of the connectors half way down the cables. It’s almost like Enermax initially only designed the unit with a single hard-wired PCI-E and EPS12v connector, but changed their minds as it hit production and decided to bodge things with a cable splicing exercise. 

 

 

 

 

Included in the modular cable bundle is two PCI-E cables that extend out into four 6+2 Pin connectors. This in addition to the hard-wired connectors brings the Revolution85+ 950w PCI-E connector count up to six – perfect for almost all graphics card configurations. However, bearing in mind that the Revolution85+ has four plugs on the PSU side for PCI-E cables, and each cable has two PCI-E plugs, there is the potential to have a whopping TEN PCI-E connectors plugged in at any one time! Now where’s my Quin-SLI motherboard got to!

  

  

One final point to note about the modular cables is just how heavily weighted in favour of SATA the Revolution is, with our 950w model kitted out with a whopping 12 SATA plugs spread over 3 cables. This is double the number of Molex connectors on the unit, which seems a somewhat strange decision considering most enthusiasts are unlikely to use more than 2 – 4 SATA connectors in an average PC system.

 

 

 

 

 

Moving on to the internal components we can see that Enermax have managed to cram quite a lot of components into a small space. Sitting pretty in the middle of the unit are three beefy transformers (yellow), with the two larger ones responsible for both the +3.3v, +5v and +12v rails. A logical guess would say that each transformer powers three of the six +12v rails, with the remaining +3.3v and +5v rails also being assigned a transformer each. The smaller single transformer is more than likely used solely for powering the +5vSB rail while the unit is in standby. 

 

 

 

Although the general arrangement of components inside the unit is quite tidy, the soldering and appearance of some of the hard-wired cables entering the unit is actually quite shabby. As we can see from the image top-right, there is also a large gap around these cables as they enter the unit, possibly indicating that Enermax were either expecting to hard-wire more cables into the unit, or simply didn’t make any alterations to their casing design to reflect the small number of hard-wired cables.

 

Rather than going for a separate AC filtering circuit, Enermax have installed an EMI filter as part of the AC plug its self. This should help to keep any internally generated noise from the MOSFET’s and other components contained within the device, while also preventing any external AC line noise from entering the PSU.

 

 

 

Over on the high-voltage side of the unit the three primary capacitors are manufactured in Japan by Panasonic Corporation have been neatly tucked below one of the units black aluminium finned heatsinks .Each of the capacitors carries a specification of 220uF / 400V at a max temperature of 85°C.

 

Moving over to the low voltage side we can se a collection of six much smaller capacitors also manufactured by Panasonic. These carry very few visible markings other than 105c, but have the job of performing one final smoothing of the voltages before they exit the unit and find their way into your PC hardware. 

  

 

 

Finally we arrive at the 135mm clear bladed fan manufactured by GlobeFan. This fan is rated at 0.28A when running at 12v and is capable of moving 95.62CFM at a very respectable 28.2dBA according to manufacturer specs.

 

Now that we’ve got acquainted with the Revolution85+ let’s get on to the testing…