To Infiniti and beyond

Packed in a heavy, well designed box you know you’re in for a treat with the Infiniti. The outer box is matt faux brushed metal with the power supply picture (on the front) and other key information highlighted in gloss. Around the sides are diagrams describing the different features in picture form. Most importantly, on the side it shows in simple table form the savings that you will make from using this power supply as it has an above average efficiency (80plus certified)

According to the table, using this power supply over a 75% efficient model, you will save $70.96 a year provided energy prices are $0.1415 per kWh. But that’s nothing compared to the warm feeling you’ll get inside knowing that the forests and their furry inhabitants are being protected. Speaking of the environment, this unit is RoHS compliant as well. Even the box is printed with ‘non-toxic vegetable oil based ink’.

Other features outlined are: PowerGuard – a system that protects you from the PSU fan failing, and tells you (via LED and buzzer) when a short circuit or other abnormality has occurred and CoolGuard which keeps the PSU and case fans on after the PC has been shutdown to increase lifespan.

Once the box is open, you can see why it was so heavy. Supplied with the Infiniti are a range of bits and bobs allowing you to connect the PSU to almost anything. There is the usual manual, power supply itself, kettle lead, screws and modular cables. However, Enermax have gone further and given you an Enermax lanyard, a pouch to keep your unused cables, a product catalogue, case stickers, socket covers, and a twin FDD adapter. The socket covers allow you to protect unused sockets on the back of the Infiniti when not in use.

The Infiniti is dominated by the huge 13.5cm fan which is guarded with a gold coloured grill which holds the Enermax logo in the middle. Surrounding this is the brushed metal of the power supply itself. This finish looks and feels unbelievably expensive and compliments the Infiniti down to a tee. As the metal hasn’t been coated with any paints or enamel the edges are sharper and the unit looks cleaner.

The Infiniti is designed to be compatible with the upcoming DX10 standards, which means that the PSU is shipped with a 6+2 PCI-e plug. This plug is backwards compatible with today’s standards, but with the inclusion of the extra 2 pins, you can use it with your new DX10 GPU.

As the Infiniti 720w has three 12v each pumping out at least 28amps (12v3 is rated at 30amps continuous to power graphics cards) you have essentially three ~200w power supplies in one box; you’ll be making some major heat. To prevent an obvious meltdown, Enermax have gone back to the drawing board and have come up with a 13.5cm fan which sucks air from the case and blows it out the honeycombed back.

The back of the unit also has the power switch which has the mains input socket above it. Directly above this is the PowerGuard LED and reset switch. The reset switch allows you to stop the internal buzzer squeaking. The LED has three different colours, ranging from green (on and working), amber (standby) and red (on and broken).

There are lots of cables supplied with the Infiniti including:

3 x SATA cable with three SATA plugs
3 x molex cable with three molex plugs
2 x 6 pin PCI-e cables
1 x extra +12v for servers
1 x 6+2 PCI-e cable
1 x 24 pin cable (not 20+4 pin)
1 x 12v 2+2 pin cable

All of these cables can be plugged in at once (with the exception of the extra +12v server cable that takes the place of a PCI-e 6 pin cable) which allows you to run 18 drives at once (more if you use pass-thru connectors). The ATX cable isn’t the usual 20+4 pin type as Enermax have decided that if you don’t have a motherboard capable of supporting a 24 pin plug then you won’t buy this PSU. This forward looking attitude has also lead to there not being any modular plugs for a floppy disc drive. Instead you have to use the supplied separate adapter.