Testing a PSU is completely different to testing a graphics card or a new motherboard. Instead of running a series of benchmarks on the PC, all the testing has to be done externally, with the helping hand of a multi-meter.

The 3 main PSU rails are tested under idle (0W) and load (200W) conditions. For the idle testing the PSU is completely disconnected from the test rig, and then using a Thermaltake PSU Tester it's jump started. For the load conditions it was connected up to the test system whilst 3DMark06 was looped.

The 12V rail is the most important of these rails, as it provides extra power to graphics cards and the CPU. The 5V and 3.3V rails are becoming more and more redundant, mainly dealing with add-in devices and hard disks.



System Components
Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 (2.4GHz)
Abit 650i SLI Motherboard
Corsair DDR2 2GB 800MHz (4-4-4-12)
MSI NVIDIA 9600GT 1GB
4 x Western Digital 80GB SATAII HDDs
2 x Seagate 250GB SATAII HDDs

During testing the temperature of the exhausted air was also taken using a digital thermometer.



I was stunned when recording the test results. So much so that I even went back and took them again. However, this just proved the first set to be correct.

I found the 3.3V and 12V rails didn’t budge at all, remaining perfectly solid. The 5V rail moved by the tiniest amount, so is really nothing to worry about. Whatever Enermax have used inside this PSU it certainly seems to be working – I’ve never seen anything this solid before.