We decided to disassemble this power supply to see what it looks like inside, how it is designed, and what components are used. Please read our Anatomy of Switching Power Supplies tutorial to understand how a power supply works and to compare this power supply to others.

This page will be an overview, while in the following pages we will discuss the quality and ratings of the components used in detail.

The first thing that caught our eye when disassembling this power supply was its 120 mm fan, which uses a 4-pin connector. First we thought it would be a PWM fan, but we got this explanation from Enermax:

“We use a bivoltage fan. We have a patent on this. Normally, when you use a fan, you lower voltage down to 3-4 V, which impacts also the hall IC of any fan, which controls the fan. With such voltage it gets unstable. By using a bivoltage fan (12 V for the hall IC and custom voltage to the bearing – any voltage, way lower than 3) we can go down to 450 rpm (even lower if we would want to). By still having the hall IC powered by 12 V, it can run/control the bearing with its custom voltage more smoothly. That's the difference to any single voltage. But we do use a standard two ball bearing fan, custom manufactured for us. That is what is looking like PWM, but you can see two 12 V wires and no PWM cable. Other manufacturers can match this only by using PWM sleeve bearing fan with limited lifetime. So we are pretty proud of our patented invention and having the world's most silent PSU fan control (and series) without sacrificing on heat or cheating even with sleeve bearing.”

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Figure 3: Fan with 4-pin connector (dual-voltage fan).

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Figure 4: Overall look.

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Figure 5: Overall look.

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Figure 6: Overall look.