Opinions on 300 Watt Enhance PSU

I'm going to build a few workstations for my office using 1 GHz Morgan Durons and I'm wondering if these Enhance PSU's are any good. I plan on overclocking the Durons to 1333, but probably not increasing the Vcore.

Here's the Newegg description on this PSU.
"ENHANCE ENP-0730 P4 300 WATT ATX POWER SUPPLY - OEM Dual Ball Bearing. AMD Approved Power Supply Comply with ATX12V and ATX 2.03 Intel Application Support Lab Approved 100% Hi-Pot and ATE QC Test Passl Over voltage, over load protection Short circuit protection on all channels High efficiency. > 65% at full load ISO 9000 Certified Model#: ENP-0730 -OEM"

Has anyone used these?
Are they any good?

I actually have had mixed experiences with the Enhance PSU's. In an office machine, they are great, but that was without an OC. In an AthlonXP 1600 machine with a 60gb hdd and a CDrom and CDrw plus a hefty vid card, it wasn't enough.

The Enhances also have a moderately loud fan in them...louder than most PSU fan's I have encountered.

The Enhance is a good cheap solution for a budget office machine, but I am not using them in the office anymore.

At newegg the Enhance's are 27 bucks, but for 39 you can get the 350w Compucase dual fan PSU. If I remember correctly, Heroichi actually makes these PSU's for Antec as well.

I always get good power ratings from them, and they are quiet and feel better built than the Enhance 300w units.

Here's a link to them

At home I recently bought a new 350w PSU, but decided against the Heroichi. Instead I went with a Sparkle 350w PSU. 3.3v and 5v combined is 220w, which is a great rating!

The sparkle units are about $42.

Here's a link to the sparkles

As for OC'ing hte morgan, here's a little experience I had yesterday with that. I recently built a 1ghz Duron system with an ECS K7S5a, which is a great budget board with integrated LAN and sound...great for an office machine. I'm using the Heroichi psu in it.

Anyway, I finished a nice 2 day burn in yesterday, and since I'm not taking it to be setup in our feild office for a few days, I figured I'd see if it would take a 133mhz bus. As you know, the K7S5A is limited in oc'ing without an oc bios in it, so I could only set to 133mhz bus and the multiplier was locked at 10x, so 1333 mhz.

To my surprise (with no vcore or any other modification) the unit booted right up. It booted into windows no problem and did burn in loops for 2 hours with no lockups. I left it on over night and it's still up...so seems pretty stable.

The amazing thing was how easy it was...no mods at all, just pop into the bios and set the fsb to 133. So easy it really wasn't all that fun

Anyway, in windows the 5v line is awesome with the Heroichi psu, even oc'd.

Thats a 33.3% oc with no effort, by the way...not too shabby.

I won't keep it that way, becuase I don't like to OC our office machines...I shoot for max stability with them...even if this one seems 100% stable its still outta spec and will be out of the office at a place were the users can destroy the best of hardware

I'm just a bit wary of oc'ing machines in the office and giving them to users. Anyway, the speed difference between 1000 and 1333 on a Duron in Word of Excel is VERY negligible!

But that's just my feeling on that.

Mike

Yeah, I've got a 1 GHz Morgan right now on an ABIT KG7 and it has really impressed me. Overclocked the FSB to 133 and the unit is rock-solid. No Vcore adjustment or anything. Temp is good, too, about 45C max. Acts a little flaky at 1400MHz, with default Vcore, but 1333 yields impressive results. Most benchmarks place is just below an Athlon XP 1600+. Not bad for a $43 chip.

Yeah, its quite amazing really. Last Duron I was going to oc was my brothers 800mhz Duron on an ECS board. That was before the first OC bios came out and it wouldn't take 133 (the only other FSB setting on that board other than 100).

I think nowadays though, since the morgan is based on the palomino, the 133 fsb should be a peice of cake since all palomino's run at 133 default. The older Spitfire cores, like my brothers, are most likely based on earlier 100mhz tbird cores...

That makes the 1ghz Duron Morgan look pretty sweet nowadays...1333mhz for 40 bucks.

Mike

PS In Sandra, look how the Duron at 1333 stacks up to the P4's

Yep, the Duron at 1333 kills most of the P4's (non-Northwood, of course).

Does anyone else have experience with Enhance PSU's.

Will 300 watts be enough for a Duron at 1333 and minimal hardware (1 or 2 hard drives, CD-ROM, cheap video, couple fans.)

Most important issues are noise and cost. I need to find a cheap, yet quiet PSU.

Well, if you're that price conscious on the PSU, the Enhance should work fine in the system you describe. However, the fan is rather loud for a PSU fan. If you had a spare 80mm fan around, you could always swap it out though... Ofcourse, I'm not talking Delta 38 loud here, but it will add considerably to overall noise.

When building a quieter system, you cannot just think of one fan's noise, but ALL of them together. By itself the Enhance's fan isn't that bad, but with 2 other case fans and a HSF (even with a thinner 70mm fan) it will add to the overall noise more than it needs to.

The Enermax 300w is $33, and quieter, and should work "ok" for an office machine (i.e. lower end video card and no intense 3d games).

But in reality, I've learned over time that cutting corners on a systems PSU is not a good idea. Spend a bit more and that extra 10-15 bucks on the total system price will be great assurance that you setup will be very stable while oc'ed.

Mike

I'll probably go with the Enermax. I've used several Enermax PSU's in the past and never had a problem with any of them. Unfortunately, the $33 Enermax has temperature controlled fans instead of manually controlled, but for $33, it will probably be fine.

Other PSU's in that price range include:

a Sparkle 300watt FSP300-60BTVS,
an Enlight 300watt EN-8304946A1,
a Heroichi Electronic corp. 300watt HEC-300AR-T,
a Raidmax DUAL FAN 320W PM-S320U,
and an Allied 350W ATX350P4,

The price is right on all of these, the question is:

Which one is quietest???

P.S. I read reviews for the Enhance PSU on Newegg's website and almost everyone said they were very noisy, so they are out of the race.