X-bit labs

ATX Power Supply Units Roundup. Part VII (page 7)

Category: Other

by Oleg Artamonov

[ 09/04/2007 | 10:40 AM ]

Floston Energetix ENFP-750W (750W)

The name of Floston Electronic Enterprise may not ring any bells in a mass user’s ears although the company has been on the market for a while. Its products are mostly meant for modders, including highlight lamps, various fans, etc. Floston offers PSUs, too.

Floston’s Energetix PSUs look really exciting. While most other PSUs come in cardboard boxes, these are shipped in neat silvery cases that resemble a toolbox. Well, you can use the case as a toolbox indeed because it only has a piece of foam-rubber inside to hold the PSU firmly in place.

The PSU has a dark glossy case (which is easily scratchable, by the way). Its dimensions are standard, but it’s got a fashionable 135mm fan. There is a slit for a not-installed mains voltage switch on the left of the front panel, which is the consequence of using the same case for different PSU models: the Energetix is equipped with active PFC and doesn’t need such a switch.

A certain drawback, the corner of the case with the mains connector and the On/Off switch is blank without vent holes.

The PSU is assembled neatly. I have no complaints about the quality of manufacture. The heatsinks are medium-sized with large lengthwise ribs in their top.

On the other hand, the ENFP-750W does not have any exceptional features, unlike the two above-described models for example. It doesn’t have two transformers or three regulators. It is quite an ordinary high-wattage PSU with active Power Factor Correction.

The combined allowable load on the +12V rail, which is split into four output lines, is 50A. The total allowable load on all the main rails is 730W. The remaining 20W is due to the -12V rail and to the standby source.

I want to note that the label is not quite correct joining the two latter rails together with a combined load limit of 20W. These rails are in fact absolutely independent from each other and if there’s a full 15W on the standby source, the -12V rail can be loaded by more than 5W. However, the -12V rail bears little load in a modern PC (it may power COM ports controllers and onboard sound but hardly anything else), so my remark is largely for the sake of truth.

The PSU offers the following cables and connectors:

• Mainboard cable with a 20+4 connector (34cm)
• CPU cable with a 4+4 connector (40cm)
• Graphics card cable with two 6+2 connectors (41+15cm)
• Two cables with three Molex connectors and one FDD mini-plug on each (39+15+15+15cm)
• One cable with four SATA power connectors (40+15+15+15cm)

This is an ordinary selection of connectors but the cables are about 10cm shorter than a regular PSU offers. It would also be good to have SATA power connectors on two different cables because you can have SATA DVD-burners and SATA HDDs installed in different areas of your system case so that it’s not convenient to connect them all to the same power cable.

The graphics card power connectors are designed in a peculiar way. They are ordinary 6-pin connectors with an additional 2-pin piece hanging about to transform this connector into an 8-pin one.

One of the two additional “ground” pins in the new 8-pin connector is meant for a more accurate correlation between the graphics card’s signal ground and the PSU’s ground. There’s current flowing through the “ground” wires of the cable at work, and so there is a voltage drop on them, resulting in a divergence between the two mentioned levels. In the composite connector of the ENFP-750W the additional piece is connected to the main connector rather than to the PSU. This design will only compensate the change in the ground level due to the voltage drop on the connector pins only rather than on the entire cable length. Anyway, this is good, too. So if you’ve got a graphics card with an 8-pin power connector, don’t be afraid to plug the 2-pin piece in!