A Look Inside

The first hint that this is a high Quality PSU you perceive when looking at its casing. What we find is a nice design and thick steel plates. Working our way inwards we also see exceptional soldering quality and also the layout looks very clear.

Right at the input there is one  X capacitors and two Y capacitors. On the main PCB the transient filtering stage continues with one Y2 capacitor and four polyfilm caps and there are two ferrite coils, one CM choke and one MOV (Metal-Oxid-Varistor). Overall the transient filtering stage is very well done.

On the primary side of the PCB we find a TOP265EG integrated Off-Line switcher made by Power Integrations which helps increasing energy efficiency in general. Next there is the main transformer but unfortunately there is no brand name visible. We guess Enermax is using a Viking B-2 in this case. Going a little further we find four massive K20J60U mosfets from Toshiba, which have been attached to large passive heatsinks.

Still on the primary side we also see a big APFC capacitor from Nippon Chemi-Con (KMQ series; 470uF and 400V at 105°C). Capacitance is well chosen for a 550W PSU and we always prefer to see one big APFC cap instead of two small ones. Furthermore Enermax is making use of a very capable Schottky diode (C3D08060A, 600V, 11A) for rectification. Apart from that, still on the primary side, there is another Y capacitor and a small Viking B-2 class 130B transformer.

On the secondary side 3.3 and 5V are generated from 12V using DC-DC conversion. The converters are located on a daughter PCB. Unfortunately we could not disassemble this part of the power supply, which is why we don't know what chips are being used here. Voltage modulation is handled be two additional PCB, one on each side of the PSU and they've been interconnected. DC filtering is done using Nippon Chemi-Con capacitors, which resembles the high quality of this unit.

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Page 1 - Introduction

Page 2 - Preview

Page 3 - Delivery / Specs

Page 4 - A Look Inside

Page 5 - Software

Page 6 - Result Analysis and Discussion

Page 7 - Conclusion