Enermax Tomahawk 500 W Power Supply Review

Conclusions

Enermax Tomahawk 500 W is a honest entry-level power supply that will please the user building an entry-level or mainstream PC and doesn’t want to spend a lot of money on a power supply. We could pull practically 550 W from it at high temperatures and its voltages were always within the expected range and noise and ripple levels were always ultra low.

The Efficiency from this power supply is a double-edged sword. At loads up to 200 W it presented a very high efficiency for an entry-level product, above 84%. But at higher loads from 400 W on efficiency was below 80%.

OCZ StealthXStream 500 W, which is on the same price range, achieved a lower efficiency on lower loads, but higher efficiency on higher loads. Since we believe that who is buying this power supply won’t be operating it on the high-load side (especially because of the reduced number of connectors available), we can easily see Tomahawk 500 W as a better product than OCZ StealthXStream 500 W.

The “problem” is that OCZ StealthXStream 400 W – which uses a completely different internal design than its 500 W sister – is way cheaper that Tomahawk 500 W and provides high efficiency across the board, and not only at lower loads. Therefore our recommendation for users on a budget building and entry-level or mainstream PC that won’t pull a lot of power is still this 400 W model from OCZ. So unless you really need those extra 100 W – which we believe you won’t –, buy OCZ StealthXStream 400 W.