Testing

As our usual testing wouldn’t even begin to stress the Enermax Infiniti 720w power supply, we had to do something special. Fortunately, we had a Gainward 8800 lying around, and an x1950 XTX. These aren’t going to be best buddies in the same system so we linked the two together… in two separate systems.

The 8800 uses two PCI-e 6 pin plugs which were taken from the red sockets on the back of the Infiniti, while the x1950 was powered using the 6+2 pin PCI-e lead. The 8800 was mounted in a Conroe system:

Core 2 Duo E6600 @ 2.7ghz
Asus P5W DH Deluxe
OCZ Special Ops 2GB PC6400

While the x1950 XTX found a new home in an AM2 system:

AMD AM2 3800+
Asus MSN-E motherboard
1GB OCZ PC6400

The AM2 system was powered using a separate power supply (incidentally an Enermax Liberty) which was connected to the motherboard alone. All the drives and fans in both PC’s were connected to the Infiniti (four hard discs, one card reader, four fans of varying sizes). This should be representative of an extreme PC :D.

The Conroe was started first, and then the AM2 was booted shortly after. Asus Probe was used to monitor voltage levels as it produced the most accurate results compared to a multimeter. Once both systems were in Windows, the Conroe was instructed to run Stress Prime on both cores, ATI Tool with the 3D view window open and RTHDRIBL running full screen (1280x1024). The AM2 only ran RTHDRIBL @ 1600x1200 with ATI Tool open.

This was left for 30 minutes and Asus Probe recorded the results. Once this had finished, all programs were quit and the idle reading were taken for 30 minutes.

It’s at this point that you expect to be shown lots of colourful diagrams and charts. Unfortunately, the ultra stable rails of the Infiniti – even in our redneck testing facility – have made this stage pointless.

The 5v and 3.3v rails literally didn’t change throughout the entire hour of testing. They sat happily at 5.145v and 3.328v. This is unheard of. I have never seen a power supply move at all for such a long time. The 12v rail managed between 12.302v and 12.249v; that’s only 0.053v difference. Chances are that the 3.3v and 5v did vary but not often enough to be picked up my Asus Probe. The multimeter reading backed up Asus Probe’s answers but solid 3.3 and 5v rails is too good to be true.

During the testing, the Infiniti couldn’t be heard over the whine of fans being used, but once the riot of sound had finished, the Infiniti could barely be heard. Seriously, this thing is quiet, thanks to its 13.5cm fan. It runs @ 900~1800RPM and is computer controlled depending on the temperature. The smaller 650w version of the Infiniti is shipped with a fan spinning @ 600~1200RPM .