And now we come to the load testing. That big beige box over there with the electrical tape racing stripes on the side is a SunMoon SM-268 electronic load. I used electrical tape because I didn't want to paint a $2000 piece of test equipment. It will be doing most of the work during this here test session, and will be assisted by all three of my auxiliary 12V loads. Other gadgets being used include a Brand 4-1850 power meter, a Kill-A-Watt power meter, a dual probe thermometer, a multimeter, and a USB Instruments DS1M12 oscilloscope.

The tests that follow were done with respect to the maximum limits given by the label. As this unit has six 12V rails and I can only handle four at a time with the scope, I'll be summing them all down to one big 12V rail. Like most big units, all 12V rails come from one source on this monster, with only overcurrent protection (like a household circuit breaker) splitting them up.

I've spoken of my methods often enough in past reviews that I'm not really feeling the need to go into a lot of detail on that today. Those big red stripes just make me want to go, go, go. Not the ones on the unit, the ones I just painted on my face. If you'd like to know how these tests work, do visit last week's GlacialTech review for more details.

The first thing I should probably do here is address the 800 pound gorilla in the above chart. Let's see... 425 Gorilla Way, Gorillaton, Saskatchewan. I'm sending him a Christmas card. Hope he likes it... I painted blue stripes on it to get it to him faster.

Now that that's done, take a look at the efficiency numbers up there. To my surprise, this unit did better than the 80 Plus sample itself, in that my sample actually came within spitting distance of Gold. No matter what I did to it, it just wasn't letting go of that 88% (rounded off) number after test three. That's incredible - so much so that I had to stop the testing numerous times to be sure the power meters were reading accurately and the auxiliary 12V loads were working properly. And since I couldn't find a problem with the test equipment, we're just going to have to call this unit like it is - exceptionally efficient.

Moving on to the voltage readings, it's clear to me that the VRM approach is working for Enhance on this design. With around 2% regulation on all rails this is not the best performer I have ever seen, but it is far from the worst. The 12V never dropped below 12V, which is nice to see. However, if I were Antec, I would have the 5V rail tweaked upward just a little bit, for it starts off test one just below mean value already. Not a big deal, but a minor nitpick.

As far as the fan goes, it did indeed remain tame for the cold tests. Then again, I would expect it to for a unit this efficient. Less wasted energy often translates into less heat to get rid of. But we'll see how long that lasts in the hot box, yes we will.

It is uncommon knowledge that the lower the load, the less efficient most SMPS designs are. 80 Plus only gets started at a 20% load level, which for this unit represents a 240 watt load. Since your computer is unlikely to idle at a load that high, what with the GPUs not needing to do any hardcore GPUing during your morning surf, you might want to pay attention to this table and that 74% efficiency rating. This unit appears to only get its real efficiency sweet spot going at loads over 200 watts or so. Not the worst result I've ever seen, but this unit is a little below average here, I must say.

Overshoot Transient Testing - Antec TPQ 1200W
VSB On	VSB to Full, 12V	Off to Full, 12V

But there's nothing below average about these results, no sir. Keeping in mind that these are the power spikes obtained by loading the unit down to 100%, and that ATX spec calls for them to be no higher than 5.5V on the 5VSB and 13.2V on the 12V, these are simply excellent results. The 5VSB spike suppression is better than average, and so is the 12V spike. This makes this unit among the best units for power on spike suppression I've tried these tests on.