Enermax Modu 82+ 625 Watt PSU Evaluation

Design and Features

The Modu 82+ is a nice looking PSU. It features a nice matte finish that is actually finger print resistant. This is in contrast with many companies that like to give you a glossy surface that attracts dust, dirt and oil from nowhere.

The top of the PSU features the product specification label that shows what you should be able to get from the Modu 82+. While most companies are pushing 800+ Watts the Enermax is listing a nice and lean 625 Watts of rated total power output.  There are three 12 Volt rails inside with each handling a healthy 25 Amps with a combined total of 50 Amps and 600 Watts of power output. The 5 and 3.3 Volt lines can each take up 24 Amps and have a combined power output of 140 Watts. The -12 and +5 Vsb lines have 0.6 Amps [7.2 Watts] and 3 Amps [15 Watts] respectively.

Now, I am not sure if you were following along at home but I just rattled off 762 Watts of combined power. Yet the Modu 82+ is only rated for 625 Watts Total power. Something is not quite right here with the numbers listed.  

The bottom of the Modu 82+ has the now typical large slow fan to keep the innards cool. Enermax does include a fan connector for this fan. To me I think that is a bad idea PSU fans should be controlled internally in the PSU. They should not rely on mainboard headers for their power in my opinion. I have had quite a few fan headers go out on different mainboards over the years and speaking as a person that has lost a complete system due to a PSU overheating I would not trust a mainboard fan header with the cooling on my PSU.

Moving on to the back side of the Modu 82+ we see again the typical honey comb grill for air flow, the power switch and the adapter socket.  Nothing really to see here so let’s move on.

Moving on to the business end we see some interesting departures from traditional PSU design. Where many modular PSUs have the PCI-e cables hard wired with the 24-Pin cable [and eight and four pin Aux connectors] Enermax has opted to make those optional as well.
 

They instead make the PCI-e connectors their own plugs. These are the two larger Red sockets you see in the picture. According to the hard-sell on the box these are for Future PCI-e power requirements.

In reality, they are for a pair of dual-4+2 pin cables that can handle multi-GPU setups [tri SLI and Crossfire-X]. The other five sockets are for your more mundane devices like HDDs, case fans, floppy/multi-readers, and CD/DVD-ROM drives.

The cables themselves are sleeved with a tough mesh material that unfortunately makes them less bendable. Now this issue with the cables has me in two minds. On the one hand they were very difficult to move around and get into place; on the other once I did get them into place they tended to stay put and not “relax” back into places I did not want them. So the stiffer cables are a mixed bag for me.

In all Enermax did a good job on the design with only a couple of bad choices [powering the fan from the mainboard and stiffer cable sleeving].