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Liberty 620 Watt ATX Power SupplyModel: ELT620AWT(active PFC)
Manufacturer: Enermax
Price: 175 USD/EUR
Info: website

As you have been able to notice we have been pushing more and more power supply units in our reviews over the past few months, and for a good reason. High-end gamers PCs these days need a good power supply unit (PSU). The power consumption that a PC can create these days is a little unheard of. Why you ask ? Increased transistor counts, higher clock frequencies and hey let's not forget the "Dual" trend. We have multi-core CPUs, and instead of one graphics cards we now have the option to double up graphics power with cards in SLI or Crossfire mode. Such a PC during a gaming session can average at 400-500 Watts power consumption ... so now you can see why these little old grey 300 Watt PSU's we had 3 years ago are by far not sufficient anymore. A PSU needs to manage the demand in a very secure way otherwise it'll create instability throughout the system. That instability can result as crashes, freezes, underperformance and even resets or shut downs of the system completely. Do not underestimate the importance of the PSU.

Then two years ago another trend picked up ... we all created a demand for modified PCs. The dull beige painted PCs had to go. We want nicely shaped cooled and preferably lit PCs with side windows so we could actually look at the inside of the PC. Really cool .. but that created another issue. We now had the beautiful looking cases where you could look inside, but that resulted in pulling the hairs out of your head as there were yellow, red, and black wires coming from the PSU everywhere. It was then that the PSU got another function, aesthetics .. it needed to look nice. By organizing them and by giving you the option to actually modify the wires you want to use, another problem was solved.

The two reasons mentioned above from a consumer point of view have been by far the most important development for PSUs, namely stable high output quality power distribution and the option for modability, using only the wires what you need. Almost ANY manufacturer has picked up on this trend and is has become a very big market for sure.

The PSU we will be testing today is a truly heavily built SLI/Crossfire ready piece of gear. You will notice that all supplied connectors are nicely wrapped in a black colored foil/plastic and are detachable. That is looking good for sure. It's advanced cable management that facilitates the installation and gives you the option to only use the required cables.  It carries the label "Liberty" and this model comes with a fantastic 620 Watts rating. It's a high-end PSU which is ready for SLI and Crossfire as it has dual 12 volts rails with high ampage, active PFC, silent fan and dual-core CPU ready. We'll explain all that to you over the next pages though.

This Liberty PSU is manufactured by Enermax and is model ELT620AWT.

Let's startup the review and have an overall look. In today's test we'll stress the PSU with an ATI X1800XT Crossfire setup that for sure will traumatize the Liberty a little.