Introduction

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

LEPA is a house brand of Enermax, so their high-end PSU offerings are based on Enermax platforms. For those few of you who never heard of Enermax before, it is one of the major PSU manufacturers with huge experience in this field, offering lots of great performing units in their products range. Their newest platform is used on Enermax MaxRevo and Platimax PSUs, some of them we have already reviewed in the past. As it seems Enermax wanted to bring LEPA into the high-end category so they gave them a modified Platimax platform which can deliver up to 1600W of power (1700W peak!) and at the same time it is 80 PLUS Gold certified since it is compatible with all power grids, contrary to the Enermax Platimax 1500W which was compatible only with 230VAC. So the G1600-MA was born and currently LEPA has the strongest PSU on the market.

The G1600-MA packs a long list of features. For starters it utilizes a full modular cabling design, its dimensions are compact considering its huge capacity, it has six +12V rails which can feed up to four high-end VGAs (4-Way GPU) and it is equipped with all modern protections to ensure its reliability along with the safety of the system it powers.

In times that all manufacturers, especially the ones that design CPUs and VGAs, struggle to lower power consumption and offer more efficient products with less energy dissipation, strangely PSU companies entered the capacity race again. Only some years ago there were very few PSUs that could deliver 1500W or more power, namely the Silverstone ST1500, the Ultra 1600W and Thermaltake's ToughPower 1500W but now competition in this ultra-high-end category already heated up with Platimax 1500, LEPA 1600, the new Thermaltake ToughPower 1500 and at this year's Computex many companies already announced new powerful units with over 1500W capacitiy. Apparently this is an impression game since only very few systems out there can fully utilize such strong PSUs but nevertheless it is really interesting for us to see how high the capacity bar can be raised.

Specifications

The unit has the ability to output 1600W continuously at 40°C and 1700W peak for a short period. These are very high power levels which we rarely see in desktop PSUs. Since the G1600-MA takes universal power input it can be certified officially by the 80 PLUS organization, which indeed classified it as a Gold efficiency unit. This is very impressive considering its huge output.
As you can see all available protections all are included, even the rare OTP which is always good to see in a PSU and especially a high capacity one. The big LEPA utilizes a ball bearings fan which promises prolonged lifetime and as indicated in the table above, the unit's dimensions are compact given its capacity. Finally the warranty is long enough and the price looks fair for what the unit offers, on paper at least.


Such high capacity needs many +12V rails in order to run safely and in this case we have six rails with 30A capacity each. Of course the OCP trigger point is set higher than 30A, to avoid pointless shutdowns when energy hungry VGAs are installed. The minor rails are pretty strong, for a modern PSU, with 140W combined max power and finally the 5VSB rail can deliver up to 4A. This is a welcome upgrade to the weak 5VSB rail of the Platimax 1500W which can output only 3A max.

Cables & Connectors, Power Distribution

As you can see the G1600-MA comes with a huge amount of cables/connectors. You can hook up to five high-end VGAs and at the same time you have two EPS connectors and one ATX12V at your disposal! Also there are fourteen SATA and ten 4-pin Molex connectors for the peripheral devices.
All cables have sufficient length, except the PCIe ones, which are kind of short. An additional 50-100mm on the main ATX and the second EPS cables would be ideal since most likely this PSU will be installed in a full tower case. Also the 24pin ATX and the PCIe/EPS connectors use thicker 16AWG wires for lower voltage drops at high loads. Unfortunately this has a negative effect on their flexibility so cabling routing tasks are going to be really tough with these cables. The rest of the connectors use the standard 18AWG gauge and all cables feature good quality sleeving.

Since this PSU features multiple +12V rails with a fully modular design, a single power distribution table would be highly confusing. Thankfully LEPA/Enermax provided a scheme of the modular PCB which provides all necessary information about +12V distribution on the modular sockets. With this scheme as guide you can easily find the correct way to install the modular cables, to match to your system requirements.



Power distribution on the modular panel is identical with the Platimax 1500 and is not ideal in my opinion. Normally 12V1 should power at least half of the peripheral/SATA sockets and not only the 24pin ATX connector. Also the first EPS connector is powered from a dedicated virtual rail, 12V2, so it could also feed the rest of the peripheral/SATA sockets. Two rails on only two connectors is an overkill while all other connectors have to share four rails.
Similar to the Platimax 1500 case, if 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 is feed from 12V4 and 12V6 respectively. These rails provide power to a single 12pin socket (and to the peripheral ones) so you won't mix any PCIe connectors with this EPS, something that could lead to OCP activation in some cases.