Enermax Revolution 85+ 950W PSU

Comparative Efficiency

At twenty percent load the Enermax drops a percent to the Seasonic, but still maintains itself higher than many other popular, premium alternatives like the Cooler Master UCP, Be Quiet! Dark Power Pro and Antec Signature series PSUs. We still maintain that while more is better, realistically a percentage point or two doesn't make a huge difference at this low wattage.



As it stands in every other table below though, the Enermax Revolution 85 tops every single one of them and by a clear margin too if you look at the nice white gap on the graph below right. The only thing that comes really close is the Cooler Master UCP 900 at full load. Again, higher efficiency is clearly better, especially more so the greater the power draw, but the total wattage difference is certainly not large in absolute percentages, although the Revolution does stamp a bigger difference than most.

Conclusions and Value

We like the Revolutions 85+ power supplies a lot. They are able to deliver phenomenally consistent, high power performance without a flinch. The bottom line is that across the board they are one of, if not the most efficient PSU products on the market right now.

Acoustically, it's extremely quiet, but the slightly unbalanced fan yields a bit of a weird noise in our model. From an aesthetic perspective, it's also unique and we really like it, but it's ultimately down to personal taste: are you a fan of plain black. Or not?

Enermax marketing needs to go back to school though: the fact is consumers don't read the "plus" on the end of "85+", they only read the 85. In effect Enermax has committed a fundamental boo-boo and instead of claiming "up to 90 percent efficiency", which makes you think "Wow! that's certainly better than the 88 perfect X/Y/Z is claiming", it has gone for the lukewarm "at least 85 percent" instead. The clear downside is that the Pro and Modu 82+ already sound very weak compared to what else is on the market, especially if you read PSU reviews regularly and are used to seeing 85+. The problem is, 230V yields higher efficiency than 115V, but why not use slightly different packaging for different countries? It's just a box, after all.

80Plus Gold hardware was already announced at CeBIT and will be shown off more actively during Computex at the beginning of June. But what we don't know is what is the price of Gold certification from the consumer's perspective? Are customers willing to pay the premium? That's something we don't know at the moment.

On the subject of money, is the Revolution 85+ 950W good value? Well, finding one in the UK would be nice. Since Enermax closed its UK office late last year, the company started using CJ Computers as a distribution and RMA hub for its products in the UK. Checking around the bigger stores though, for a big brand like Enermax there's now very few items to be found, with just a smattering on some sites and others, where we used to find them, none at all are listed now. We struggled to source a 950W Revolution 85+ at the time of writing but where we did find the best price of £189.69, nowhere was actually in stock.

Elsewhere, comparatively we can pick up a Cooler Master UCP 900W for just £137, but it's non modular, and even though the 1,100W units are only £150, these are only 80Plus Bronze rated. The popular Corsair HX1000W is a similar £185, but it's certainly far noisier at full load and even though it's also semi-modular, we'd opt for the slightly lower wattage Revolution for just £5 more.

There's also the Be Quiet! Dark Power Pro 1,000W, which is semi modular too, and a bit cheaper at £170. Like all recent Be Quiet! Dark Power products, it is excellent (it's part of the labs test in the next issue of Custom PC), but runs hotter than the Revolution. It does have similarly six great rails and only slightly lower efficiencies than what we recorded with the Revolution 85+ 950W.

The bottom line is that there are cheap PSUs around the 1,000W mark that you wouldn't touch with a barge pole, there are "good enough" PSUs you can save a bit of money on. However, if you honestly need close to a kilowatt of power then you already own a few thousand pounds worth of hardware, so buy something that complements this. Unfortunately for Enermax though, the sticking point is most of us won't need this much.

Finally there's the warranty. Enermax still only gives all its PSUs a three year warranty. While three years is a lifetime in our industry, and long enough for most of us, compared to the competition's five or even seven years, it seems a little skimmed considering we're buying a premium product. Again, we feel that outside of the actual core product, Enermax needs to do a little work.

Final Thoughts

The Revolution 85+ power supply is an excellent product, with a good price. That is, if you can find one.

To be pedantic, I suppose the box and bundle needs a bit of work, perhaps the fan could be a bit better, the warranty and after sales more competitive and we don't like the 85+ in the name... but really, in the grand scheme of things, these do little to detract from the main headline. If you really need close to a kilowatt of power, buy an Enermax Revolution 85+ 950W. It's as simple as that.

• Efficiency/Voltages
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• 10/10

• Noise/Heat
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• 10/10

• Features
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• 9/10

• Value
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• 8/10

• Overall
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• 10/10

Score Guide