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ATX Power Supply Group Test

Author Lars-Göran Nilsson
Published 8th Feb 2005
Manufacturer Coolergiant
Supplier Scan
Price £36.60 (Exc VAT)
as reviewed £43.00 (Inc VAT)
Latest Price Click here
Overall Score 3 for Overall
ATX Power Supply Group Test
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The Enermax range is sold under the Coolergiant brand in the UK and in certain other parts of the world, as the Enermax name was already taken in those regions, but the products are identical. Enermax was founded in 1990 and is something of a household name in the power supply business so one would expect a certain pedigree from its products. It must be said though that we were quite dissapointed with what we got.


The casing of the EG375AX-VE(G) is finished in what on a car would be referred to as metallic blue with the fans protected by gold coloured fan guards. It's one of the cheaper models from Coolergiant, though compared to some other brands, it’s still expensive. Despite featuring two fans, this PSU is part of Enermax’s Noisetaker range and is sold as its low noise option. Around the back is a fan speed controller that adjusts both the fans, though, on our review sample at least, it didn’t seem to make much difference.

The noise level ranged between slightly noisy to very noisy, which was disappointing for a product that is sold as low noise. There is also a header that can be connected to your motherboard, which should enable you to monitor the fan speeds if your motherboard has a suitable utility. A factor that contributes to the noise, is the fact that the fans continue to run until the internal temperature in the PSU is below 40 degrees Celsius, even though the PC has been switched off It’s meant to prolong the life of the PSU but comes at the cost of increased noise.

It features dual 12V rails, which means that it should be able to cope with higher loads without having to deliver massive amounts of amps. Rated at 370W, the EG375AX-VE(G) is not very powerful by today’s standards, but this should be more than plenty for most PCs. The general design of the cabling reflects the limited power output as Coolergiant has only fitted five Molex connectors as well as two floppy connectors. This is somewhat on the stingy side especially as Coolergiant has configured the cables in a very odd fashion. There is however, a further two SATA power connectors, so there shouldn’t really be too much of a problem as long as you don’t have too many drives.


There is of course a 20-pin ATX power connector as well as a four pin 12V connector and for those with older motherboards there is an AUX connector. There is also a spare four pin Molex connector, (labelled extra), bunched up with the 12V and AUX connector, which we presume is for some older motherboards. Surprisingly for a PSU with dual 12V rails, there’s no 24-pin connector and no adaptor supplied either, so if you have a new Pentium 4 board that uses this connector you’ll need to get one to use this PSU.

The two braided cables are very stiff and this makes them hard to work with, but this is really only a minor issue compared to what we encountered while testing the PSU.

Up to 75 per cent load the EG375AX-VE(G) worked just fine and produced some very acceptable numbers. However, at 100 per cent load the PSU simply powered down completely, which isn’t something that we’d expect to see. This means that if you ever would put a very heavy load on it, the EG375AX-VE(G) would switch itself and in turn your PC, off - not something you’d want. This is even more disappointing from a PSU with dual 12V rails, as it shouldn’t have any problems coping with a 100 per cent load. It seemed like it was the primary 12V rail that was the weak factor here as we could load the second 12V rail at 100 per cent but the primary one would never go over 75 per cent.

In addition to this the model on review is not a full range PSU which means that it can only be used with 220-240V, (although it worked fine all the way down to 200V), and was also quite noisy. At the end of the day there are far better products on test here, so this is one to avoid.

ManufacturerCoolergiant/Enermax
ModelNoisetaker EG375AX-VE(G)
URLhttp://www.coolergiant.co.uk
SupplierScan
URLhttp://www.scan.co.uk
Price£43.48
Molex connectors6
Floppy connectors2
SATA connectors2
20-pin ATX / 24-pin EPSY/N
12V connectorY
AUX connectorY
Six pin PCI Express connectorN
Deditacted Molex for graphicsN
Fan speed headerY
Other connectorsN/A
Fans and size1x 80mm & 1x 92mm
Extras includedN/A
Max power output (manufacturers rating)
3.3V30A
5V32A
12V14A + 13A
Total power370W

 

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