Enermax Galaxy 850W Review - Testing the Galaxy
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Well one thing is certain: my system will not max out the Galaxy. From a basic calculation of a Kentsfield Quad Core processor cost around $1500 at time of review (for engineering samples) and a Quad SLI setup featuring two 7950GX2s at $500 apiece, and say 24 hard drives, I'm budget conscious so I am going with $100 a piece, you're looking at powering a total of $4900 of components which you can power 24/7 with an internal temperature of 50C inside the Galaxy. This monster power supply is remarkable if you ask me.
So with my components, let's see how the Galaxy performs. The galaxy is more than likely powerful enough for me to attach every single drive in my apartment, and still provide excellent stability of the rails. I would have done so, but in all reality there is no need as I can't put a load on all those drives, and they would sit idle. If I had a means of running a RAID with at least four of the drives, then I'd give it a shot.
Test Bed
- Intel Core2Duo E6300 @ 2.345 GHz (7 x 335 MHz 1.2v)
- 2GB (2x1024MB) Crucial Ballistix Tracer 55512 1:1
- Cooler Master Eclipse Cooler
- DFI Infinity 975X @ 335 MHz FSB
- Sapphire X800 GTO 2 @ 615/650
- Hitachi Deskstar SATA2
- BenQ DVD+RW drive
- Antec HDD Cooler & temp probe
Results
Once I loaded up Battlefield 2142 and hooked up my digital multimeter to the power leads on the motherboard, and an exposed SATA connector, I was able to give the Galaxy a go under some intense gaming action. This will give me readings from the 12v lines on the CPU, as well as 12v, 5v, and 3.3v rails for the peripherals.
- CPU 12v line
- 12.07 Idle 12.06 Load
- Accessory lines
- 12.21v Idle 12.19 Load
- 5.05v Idle 5.04 Load
- 3.32v Idle 3.32 Load
With my test bed there was an extremely minimal voltage drop at load, which was still above specs. This shows that the Galaxy is a powerhouse of a power supply. Such a minimal drop from highly overclocked hardware certainly leaves a lot of head room for higher end components which eat up a lot of power.
Next: Conclusion >>
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