Enermax Galaxy 1000 Watt PSU

PSU - Power Supply Units 108 Page 5 of 6 Published by

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Page 5

The Test.
Right, how do you test a PSU ? It's not that difficult actually. We always settle for real-world experiences. We took an ASUS P5N32 SE DeLuxe mainboard and equipped it with Conroe dual-core E6800 Extreme Processor, quad-sli (2x GeForce GX2 7950 GX2 1024 MB), 2 GB DDR2 memory @ 800 MHz, added a DVD-Writer and two HD's.

After the installation we load of ForceWare 91.37 Quad SLI drivers, and enable a seriously funky gaming experience at a monitor resolution of 2560x1600 pixels.

Pretty spiffy setup don't you think ?

Now for the test we loop some gaming timedemo's for a while and monitor the behavior of the PSU. During that process, as we always do, we actually dared and burnt a DVD in the background. Sounds silly ? Not really ...

We'll show you some results in a tidbit.

Enermax Galaxy 1000 Watt PSU review
The test setup in the batcage.

Sorry for the mess, but we are over our heads into reviews, Quad SLI, Conroe and so on and on. Normally this review would be included into our Quad SLI test, yet I was so impressed by it that I just had to write a little stand-alone review on thus unit.

Sound - we have to include a quick stroll regarding noise levels these days. I've had cheap PSU's in this office that likely could have functioned as active rotating helicopter blades when they got a little hot. This PSU doesn't need much wording in this regard though, it simply is quite silent yet audible. The heat on the inside of the PC is being sucked outside the PC creating airflow with the help of a 120mm silent fan. The backside of the PSU has another fan, so hot air traveling in an upwards direction will be partly ventilated towards the outside where colder air is due to ventilation. Quite silent and sufficient enough to cool the PSU.

Enermax Galaxy 1000 Watt PSU review

For gamers with (Quad) SLI/Crossfire, the most power draw will be at the 12 volts rails. Tapping the 12volts rails separately with a multi-meter will show stability in Watts. Here we see the 12 volts line when the system in idle.

Enermax Galaxy 1000 Watt PSU review

Now here we see the 12 volts (2) rail when the Quad SLI setup is 100% at work and peaking. This was the maximum variation shown in the test and is flawlessly stable.

Enermax Galaxy 1000 Watt PSU review

At one point we also burned a DVD in the background as that requires a stable power supply. Okay you get the idea already, stable as a rock and all that without any harsh noise from the fans. Pretty "vigorous" stuff.


LOW is the lowest measured value and HIGH of course the highest voltage peak we measured. A 5% fluctuation is perfectly acceptable, so 12 Volts should remain between 11.4 - 12.6v as you can see the PSU when stressed stays FAR from that.

Here we took some of the voltages in both IDLE and LOAD (fully utilized) modes. We noted down the lowest and highest value we see and that is the fluctuation. If a PSU is unstable we'd see much fluctuation, differences and discrepancies which can result in system instability.

On each of the voltage rails, a 5% tolerance would be the accepted as normal, meaning the power-supplies actual voltages should stay somewhere in-between the values.

There's no such thing present for the Galaxy, thus thing is STABLE.

Now then, you've had a peek at the photo's, combined all factors, and now you should have a pretty broad idea of how this PSU would function for your current or future PC. Quite honestly, I did my best. In a 3D intensive test run with 100% utilization in an overclocked environment with at one point even DVD burning in the background. This little toddler is stable for sure, and remember this was tested on a NVIDIA Quad SLI system.

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