Introduction

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

Some of you may have never heard the brand name LEPA before. According to their website, they are a brand of Ecomaster, which is closely affiliated with Enermax. For example, Ecomaster is the US distributor of Enermax. This also explains why we have seen some of Enermax's top performing power supply platforms used in LEPA products, at lower prices than from Enermax directly. But Enermax had its purpose. They simply wanted to establish a good name for LEPA in beginning, even if they had to sacrifice a percentage of their sales from the Modu87+ series units. Afterwards they would push the low-middle range units under the LEPA brand and the high-end PSUs would still be available from Enermax.
As time passed, the afore mentioned scenario played out and while at the beginning of its release the LEPA G700-MA was sold at a way lower price compared to the identical Enermax MODU87+ EMG700AWT now both cost exactly the same on Newegg (excluding the mail in rebates).

As we already mentioned, today we will have the chance to take a detailed look at the LEPA G700-MA. This unit boasts 80 PLUS Gold efficiency, has a semi-modular design and is equipped with a full set of protections for ultimate piece of mind. On top of that the G700-MA is backed by a five year warranty and while its price at the time of the review was a little high, for its capacity, at $149.99, a mail in rebate drops it to only $99.99, making it a pretty good deal for a Gold efficiency modular 700W unit. A $50 mail in rebate for sure is note worthy!

Specifications

All available protections are present in this unit and along with the five year warranty LEPA ensures the future buyer's piece of mind. The fan has a strange diameter, 139mm, because someone else patented the use of 140mm fans in PSUs. Very strange thing those patents. We wonder how can someone patent the use of 140 mm fans in PSUs! Finally the maximum operating temperature is 50°C and the price (at the time of review) is on the high side, so the unit better performs really well to score a high price/performance ratio.


There are three +12V rails with 25A max power each and all of them combined can deliver almost the full power of the unit, something typical in PSUs that utilize DC-DC converters in their secondary side. The minor rails are restricted to 120W but a contemporary system won't need even close to this power and finally the 5VSB has sufficient capacity with 3A.

Cables & Connectors, Power Distribution

All cables are long enough, except the modular PCIe connectors for which additional 100 mm would be ideal. Thankfully the distance among all connectors is the recommended one (by ATX spec).
As you can see the unit has enough connectors for its capacity and on top of that the two EPS connectors along with the four PCIe ones are available at the same time. Finally the 24pin ATX connector uses thicker 16AWG wires while all other connectors use the recommended 18AWG gauges.


Power distribution in this unit is good since the EPS connectors and the PCIe ones are fed through different rails. Here we should note that each of the two PCIe sockets on the modular panel is powered by both 12V2 and 12V3 rails, so if you want to power only one VGA with two PCIe connectors then you better connect only one cable to ensure that each PCIe connector will be fed through different 12V rails.

Packaging

The package looks rather strange with the weird combination of the black background and the vivid yellow color. On the front we find a photo of the unit along with the illustration of a leopard. The Gold efficiency badge is small and resides in the top left corner. On the rear side there is detailed info about the features and characteristics of the PSU including a pyramid explaining the most crucial aspects of the unit. This pyramid also informs us that the 139mm fan used in this PSU has a patented design with the last word misspelled (desigh)!