Enermax D.F.12 Revolution White 850w 80 PLUS Gold ATX 3.1 PSU Review

TweakTown's Rating: 94%

The Bottom Line

Enermax has a great ATX 3.1 PSU with the D.F. 12 Revolution performing almost at 80 PLUS Platinum levels, for Gold pricing. It seems like a win to us!

Pros

• Compact design
• 80 PLUS Gold rating, but performs almost at Platinum levels
• Premium individually sleeved cables with cable combs
• 100% Japanese capacitors and 10-year warranty
• ATX 3.1 / PCIe 5.1 ready and dust-free rotation button

Cons

• More expensive than its competition

Should you buy it?

AvoidConsiderShortlistBuy

Buy at Amazon for $129.99

Introduction, Specifications, and Pricing

Enermax, which primarily engineers and manufactures PSUs and ATX cases for the PC market, has sent over a new ATX 3.1 PSU, the D.F. 12 Revolution 850w, for us to look at. The D.F. 12 Revolution is 80 Plus Gold rated with a full 600w 12V-2X6 cable for newer NVIDIA GPUs and priced at $139.99 for both the white and black models. A 750w model is also available for $10 cheaper in both colors.

So, let's dive in and check out this compact ATX 3.1 power supply from Enermax.

Enermax D.F.12 Revolution White 850w Gold ATX 3.1 PSU (REVOLUTION D.F. 12 850W White)

	Today	Yesterday	7 days ago	30 days ago
	$129.99	$129.99	$129.99	$129.99	Buy
* Prices last scanned on 10/22/2024 at 2:23 pm CDT - prices may not be accurate, click links above for the latest price. We may earn an affiliate commission from any sales.

Packaging

18

The D.F. 12 Revolution's packaging is minimal. It comes in a plain branded cardboard box with a white sleeve showing the PSU inside.

18

The backside of the white sleeve shows the specifications, cables, and connectors, as well as a few interesting features, such as compactness and dust-free fan technology.

18

Removing the sleeve from the cardboard box and opening up the flap shows the owner's manual along with the packaging for the PSU and all cabling.

18

The cable pouch from the box has been removed, and a white branded pouch has been added.

18

Removing the cables from the pouch is a black NEMA 5-15P to C13 power cable (which I gave them a hard time about at CES 2024 in Las Vegas), silver mounting screws, a PSU jumper bridge, white cable combs, and all of the various cables that are individually sleeved with nice white braiding along with white connectors.

18

Moving to the PSU itself, it is packaged in white high-density foam on both the top and bottom, protecting most PSUs from damage while in transit.

18

Again, Enermax has packaged the PSU in a white Enermax-branded cloth pouch, showing some attention to detail.

Outside the Enermax D.F.12 Revolution White 850w Gold ATX 3.1 PSU

18

The D.F. 12 Revolution PSU itself has a fairly compact design, with the fan intake spanning just about the entire width of the top. In the center of the fan grille is an embossed Enermax logo and name, while the white fan is visible. We will talk more about the fan later.

18

The cable output section of the D.F. 12 Revolution has 11 connectors. Five are combination CPU or PCIe 8 connections, three SATA/MOLEX connections, and a single 12V-2x6 connection. Lastly, the motherboard outputs are split into an 18-pin and 12-pin to the 24-pin header.

18

The rear of the D.F. 12 Revolution is pretty simple. It has the C13 power input, a white power rocker switch, and a D.F. Switch for the dust-free fan rotation that Enermax has been advertising. The D.F. Switch allows the PSU fan to spin backward for around 10 seconds to remove dust from the fan blades effectively. The rest of the back has a hexagonal mesh ventilation pattern.

18

The left and right sides of the D.F. 12 Revolution have stickers with the PSU's name and wattage.

18

The informational sticker on this side of the D.F. 12 Revolution shows 70.8 amps on a single 12V rail.

Inside the Enermax D.F.12 Revolution White 850w Gold ATX 3.1 PSU

18

Oddly enough, Enermax does not use its own fan in this ATX 3.1 PSU. That's a bummer. The 120mm model used is by Zeta Group, model ZFB122512M, running on 12V on .25A. It is a double-ball-bearing fan, so it's good there.

18

Once the fan is removed, we can see the compact design of this PSU, which is really close to the size of an SFX-L PSU in all reality. So, think of small form factor builds when considering this PSU. On the primary side, it has an APFC full bridge with an LLC converter. On the secondary side, it has synchronous rectification and DC-DC converters.

18

The overall compactness of the ATX PSU style presents a few problems, first of all, thermals. The lack of spacing between all the system components generating heat, which is the enemy here, will be the biggest problem for the 120mm fan, which will inevitably get loud at a certain threshold. The VRM section of the D.F. 12 Revolution is near the power output section, while the main transformer is in the center.

18

The two main capacitors used here are from Rubycon, which is Japanese. They are each rated at 270uF (540uF combined) at 420v and have a max thermal temperature of 105C.

Test System, Installation, and Finished Product

• Motherboard: B650 AORUS Elite AX (AMD B650) - Buy from Amazon
• CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 7700X - Buy from Amazon
• Cooler: ARCTIC Liquid Freezer II 360 - Buy from Amazon
• Memory: Patriot Viper Venom 32GB DDR5 5600 RGB - Buy from Amazon
• Graphics Card: NVIDIA RTX 3090 Founders Edition - Buy from Amazon
• Storage: Corsair MP600 PRO XT Gen4 PCIe x4 NVMe M.2 SSD - Buy from Amazon
• Case: Cooler Master MasterBox 600
• Power Supply: Enermax D.F. 12 Revolution 850w White ATX 3.1 PSU - Buy from Amazon
• OS: Microsoft Windows 11 Pro 64-bit Build 22621 - Buy from Amazon
• Software: AIDA64 Engineer v7.20.6800, CPU-z 2.09.0 x64. GPU-Z 2.57.0, and HWiNFO64 v7.63-5205

Final Thoughts

18

Running our suite of testing ATX hardware components, which consists of an AMD Ryzen 7 7700X running 8 cores (1.128 vcore) and 16 threads, the AM5 motherboard that was used here is a B650 AORUS Elite A.X., for RAM 32GB of Viper DDR5-5600 from Patriot Memory, and an NVIDIA RTX 3090 FE running at a 80% power limit. Loading up the D.F. 12 Revolution 850w ATX 3.1 PSU, the AMD Ryzen 7 7700X, the CPU wattage ran up to only about 67 watts, while the NVIDIA RTX 3090 FE, the GPU drew around 279 watts on average.

The motherboard, the B650 AORUS Elite A.X., draws approximately 36 watts, measured from pins 24 (ground) and 11 (+12V1) with a digital multimeter. The power drawn from the wall was measured with a Killawatt P3 digital electrical usage monitor, read at watts during testing.

The total wattage reported from HWiNFO64 was 354 watts being drawn between the CPU and GPU, adding about 36 watts from the motherboard for 390 watts. Doing some math, this makes the D.F. 12 Revolution 850w model 91.8% efficient at a 50% PSU load, coming up just short of attaining the 80 Plus Platinum certification; well done, Enermax. Surprisingly, the 120mm fan was not audible compared to the rest of the system fans in the test system, so there was no reason to be concerned.

This testing was done for over 6 hours by running the Aida 64 Engineer's System Stability Test. Other monitoring software used was HWiNFO64 v7.63-5205, TechPowerUp GPU-Z v2.59.0, CPU-Z 2.0.9.0.x64, and MSI Afterburner v4.6.4.16255.

In closing, the D.F. 12 Revolution 850w ATX 3.1 PSU from Enermax is a banger of a PSU that comes in a very compact design, especially while still within the ATX 3.1 specification. With the MSRP set at $140, the D.F. 12 Revolution 850w is more expensive than the rest of its competition. What the D.F. 12 Revolution has over those others is its ability to be almost at 80 Plus Platinum levels in efficiency, not to mention the compact size and the individually sleeved cables.

Let's also address the elephant in the room: it's a white PSU, often a rare find in the land of PSUs. For users that are building in a smaller, compact, ATX style case, users who are looking for a PSU offering reduced size, individually sleeved cables, and performing almost at 80 Plus Platinum levels of efficiency, that's where the D.F. 12 Revolution might be the PSU with features you are looking for.