Introduction

We would like to thank Enermax for supplying the review sample.

Enermax currently has the most complete 80PLUS Platinum lineup, called Platimax, which consists of five units with capacities ranging from 600W to 1200W. Although there are five 80 Plus Platinum compliant Platimax units, there is another one which due to the exclusive use of 220-240VAC input cannot be classified by the 80 Plus organization which evaluates desktop PSUs only at 115VAC. This model sits right at the top of the Platimax series and is able to deliver 1500W of power with over 90% efficiency, according to Enermax. The Platimax 1500 (or EPM1500EGT) currently is one of the strongest and efficient PSUs available on the market today. According to Enermax it can achieve 90-95% efficiency at 20-100% load. Of course its efficiency is higher than the Platinum levels thanks to the 230VAC power input which raises efficiency by 1-1.5% compared to 115VAC.

Briefly, the EPM1500EGT uses the same design features like the MaxRevo and other Platimax units. A specially designed main transformer along with the copper-bridge array that transfers DC voltages to the modular PCB are also present in the big Enermax along with many more state of the art features. The amount of provided connectors is amazing, ten PCIe connectors along with two EPS, fourteen SATA and ten peripheral ones are at your disposal. This unit is a real power house and it will, effortlessly, feed everything with power you throw at it. But we better end the prologue here; it’s high time to introduce you to the beast.

Specifications

Enermax promises 90-94% efficiency for this beast and we have no reason not to believe them. Among the protections that this unit features we spotted a new one, the AC UVP which activates when the AC input voltage drops below 70VAC. This sound strange since the unit works with 220-240VAC so the trigger point for this protection normally should be much higher, around 170-180VAC. Also the Over Temperature Protection is activated when the PSU's heatsink hits >90-110°C. Unfortunately the max operating temperature is restricted to 40°C but in our tests we will conduct our tests in higher ambient temperatures, since OTP will save the unit if we overheat it.
The cooling fan is equipped with twister bearings so it enjoys a long lifespan. The use of only Japan made caps, the high quality fan and the five year warranty justify a part of the high price. Finally, despite its monstrous capacity the unit's length is kept short (for comparison the Silverstone ST-1500 has 220mm length).


There are six +12V rails with 30A power each, and all combined, can deliver the full power of the unit. This is something we don't see every day, that's for sure; 1500W from +12V alone. On the contary, the minor rails are pretty weak at 120W but in a modern system you won't need more anyway, so there is no reason to complain about this. However only 3A at 5VSB from a 1500W capacity unit sounds a little bit strange. We expected at least 4A at this rail, from such a high capacity unit. Finally, for those who need more than 1500W, the EPM1500EGT can deliver up to 1650W for a short time!

Cables & Connectors, Power Distribution

Ten PCIe connectors are available for the users that will manage to find a case and a mainboard that supports five VGAs. So far eight PCIe connectors were the max we had seen but the EPM1500EGT simply sets the bar even higher. The number of other connectors is very large too, two EPS, one ATX12V, fourteen SATA, ten peripheral and two FDD connectors complete the picture. Finally the 24pin ATX connector, along with the EPS and the PCIe ones, uses 16AWG wires for lower voltage drops at higher loads. The rest of the connectors use the standard 18AWG wires.

Since the PSU has many +12V virtual rails and a power distribution table most likely would confuse most of you, we decided to use the following illustration (courtesy of Enermax) which describes in detail which rail feeds every socket in the modular panel.


In our opinion 12V1 should power at least the half of the peripheral/SATA sockets and not only the 24pin ATX connector. The first EPS connector is powered from a dedicated virtual rail, 12V2, so it could also feed the other peripheral/SATA sockets. In case you need to use the second EPS/ATX12V connector, you should connect its cable either to the middle top socket or to the top right one, which feed from 12V4 and 12V6 respectively. These rails provide power to a single 12pin socket (and to the peripheral ones) so you won't starve any PCIe connectors of power, with this EPS, something that could lead to OCP activation in some cases.