Enermax Liberty Eco 620W PSU Review

Comparative Efficiency

Compared to a few other 500-600W products - a common purchasing range for many in the performance mainstream market - the Liberty Eco is pretty average by today's standards. The Liberty Eco can't touch Be Quiet!'s Dark Power Pro for love nor money.

Even Corsair's older VX550W, while 70W short in the total power stakes, has a higher efficiency value, and only the OCZ ModXStream Pro consistently performs worse than the Liberty Eco. That said, the OCZ is also about half the price, so it's arguably "better" by comparison as there's only a fraction of a percent difference.

So while on its own the Liberty Eco is a good product with a solid voltage and efficiency set, competitively speaking, it's not, on the whole, a winner.

Value and Conclusions

Now the value discussion - the key to any review. The cheapest Liberty Eco 620W we could find in the UK was priced at a considerable £96. From the same retailer, you can buy the touch more efficient and fuller featured 625W Modu 82+ for LESS at £92, and a Dark Power Pro 650W is only £104 - £8 more for class leading efficiency, genuine silence and better cabling.

Despite the fact the Liberty Eco is a fine product when viewed in isolation, it doesn't offer best-in-class performance, and its pricing is uncompetetive, especially as it's being marketed as a "sub Modu/Pro 82+" model (Ooh I feel deja vu coming on).

Other 600W-ers are a damn sight cheaper too - the OCZ ModXStream Pro is £64, although we'd certainly suggest the Liberty Eco (if you had to) over the ever popular, but long in the tooth Corsair HX620 now that retails for a similar £94.

Enermax can't seem to get its prices right in the UK, and despite the fact it may sell in a dozen online stores it's hard to find one that sells more than just a couple of products. The Liberty Eco at Scan was one of the few places at the time of writing that has had stock - and since being featured in Custom PC issue 71, the price has even dropped almost £10, but it needs to go another £20 before we'd consider it competitive.

Most of us would find the Liberty Eco "enough" in terms of connectors and efficiency, and at a more aggressive price it would make an extremely compelling product for those who can't afford the Dark Power Pro or Zalman ZM660-XT but whp want something more than the OCZ ModXStream Pro or BFG MX550W PSUs.

Final Thoughts

Enermax has a solid product with the Liberty Eco - it runs cool, it's quiet enough, it works great and it's efficient enough to hit 80Plus Bronze efficiency in our testing. However but it's not the quietest of PSUs, lacks post shut-down fan cooling other Enermax and competing products have and the braiding effort needs to be completed.

In our opinion this mainstream model needs to be a good £20 (or more) cheaper to be compelling. It's positioned too close to the Modu 82+ to carve out its own identity and that makes it close enough to be eclipsed by the far superior Dark Power Pro 650W, which we'd still opt for instead.

• Efficiency/Voltages
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• 8/10

• Noise/Heat
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• 8/10

• Features
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• 7/10

• Value
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• -
• -
• 5/10

• Overall
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• 7/10

Score Guide