ENERMAX Liberty 500w - Strange Piezo Ignition sounds?

Big.Wayne

Big.Wayne

Big.Wayne

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Hiya,

been having some real problems getting a new build done and in the process the mobo died on me. I have now got 'the fear' and am wondering if there is a problem with my brand new ENERMAX Liberty 500w

When I power-up the system the PSU makes a strange electrical clicking sound, similar to a 'Piezo Ignition'. Similar to an electrical lighter built into a gas hob for instance.

This sound only lasts a second or two then it goes away, but pretty sure I didn't hear a PSU do this before?

This system I am working on is for a music studio and therefore I am paying special attention to making it as quiet as possible. Due to the fact its an almost silent system I can hear things that may not normally be possible if u have a system loaded with noisy (especially those VERY LOUD GPU fans lol!)

Also there is the fact that the first motherboard connected up died in 2 days, so I am worried this PSU may be faulty.

Can anyone who owns an ENERMAX Liberty series PSU tell me if theirs makes a series of electrical 'Piezo' clicks when they first power on their systems?

thanks in advance! :)
 
it puzzles me,i waited and watched which PSU got the most reccomendations,everyone said "Enermax", now it`s "Corsair", as far as i can see, it would depend on which is the "flavour of the month",i bought the Enermax based on huge reccomendation from this forum, it would seem that Corsair is the way to go this month,it will be Tagan next month :rolleyes:
 
Massive Attack said:
no offence but that says it all, the amount of times ive read my enermax libery killed my mobo/died, id rma asap or send it back to the place u bought it from and get a different make
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Have you got some evidence? I've yet to hear a bad thing said about enermax.
it puzzles me,i waited and watched which PSU got the most reccomendations,everyone said "Enermax", now it`s "Corsair", as far as i can see, it would depend on which is the "flavour of the month",i bought the Enermax based on huge reccomendation from this forum, it would seem that Corsair is the way to go this month,it will be Tagan next month
Click to expand...
The problem is when peoples psus die they come on here and complain. In reality all makes of psus invariably do die every so often, but thats no reason to say that that brand is bad, its impossible to design a psu where a few won't die. What makes the difference between a decent psu and a rubbish one is if it kills components or not, and i've yet to hear of an enermax psu killing components.

Corsair has become well recommended recently because its got very good reviews, and its basically a Seasonic with a better warranty, a longer life, and a quieter fan. OCZ psus on the other hand took a few years before they were being recommended because we needed time to see if they were any good.

Currently the recommended list of decent psu manufacturers is as follows: Enermax, Tagan, Seasonic, FSP, OCZ, Corsair, Antec. Don't buy one from anyone else.
These should be the ones that get mentioned regularly on here. Obviously there are others that may or may not be good, but if you stick to those you can't go wrong.


If this one has killed components it will be the first one i've heard of doing so. I hope it hasn't. Best to rma it.
 
Hi,

I'm not sure what has happened exactly so I am still going over the crime scene with a fine tooth comb. I'm pretty sure the mobo is faulty (and has been RMA'ed) but I'm still not certain which way round the events happened . . .

  • Mobo was inherently faulty and failed after 2 days
or
  • PSU is inherently faulty and damaged the mobo after 2 days

The PSU is running now, connected to an old PIII, and apart from that weird 'clicking/sparking' sound at startup it appears to be working fine.

Tricky one to RMA, not quite sure how to explain the issue, thats why I wanted anyone else with one of these PSU's to listen carefully to it when the system is booted! I guess I will try and locate an ENERMAX phone number and give them a call on monday morning for a chat.
 
Joe42 said:
Have you got some evidence? I've yet to hear a bad thing said about enermax.
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i know of 2 people who have lost their motherboards to enermax liberties, and there are many threads about it on these forums.. although i must admit it was maybe 3? months ago, or so - and it seemed to be about 6 cases in 4weeks - then now its all fine - maybe a not so good batch got out or something?

i cant be botherd to go thru and find each and every post but these 2 spring to mind.. and there are others

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17624042&highlight=Liberty+Dead
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17615586&highlight=Liberty+Dead
 
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wow. And I mean that sarcastically. Unless you get huge threads ala X-Fi don't worry about it. You always get failures, and roughly 1 a week is nothing. Perhaps if there were couple of dozen per week, and single "Enermax Liberty failure rate" was 20 pages long.
 
hay the guy he had yet to hear about enermax failure and wanted evidence - i never said they pop more than any other psu :) nor that enermax are not to be trusted.. just saying that it does happen that's all buddy

- although personally i wont go anywhere near an enermax lol
 
allllec said:
i know of 2 people who have lost their motherboards to enermax liberties, and there are many threads about it on these forums.. although i must admit it was maybe 3? months ago, or so - and it seemed to be about 6 cases in 4weeks - then now its all fine - maybe a not so good batch got out or something?

i cant be botherd to go thru and find each and every post but these 2 spring to mind.. and there are others

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17624042&highlight=Liberty+Dead
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17615586&highlight=Liberty+Dead
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Thanks for taking the trouble to find some evidence, but from what i can see skimming those threads neither of them actually took out any components... ?

Looks like one to keep an eye on but they aren't exactly frying components by the dozen like the hipers were at one point so i don't think its enough for me to stop recommending them.
Its a little worrying nonetheless, definitely something to keep an eye on.
squiffy said:
wow. And I mean that sarcastically. Unless you get huge threads ala X-Fi don't worry about it. You always get failures, and roughly 1 a week is nothing. Perhaps if there were couple of dozen per week, and single "Enermax Liberty failure rate" was 20 pages long.
Click to expand...
I don't care about failures unless its an very large number of them, its the frying components thats the problem. If they start doing that in more than very rare cases then we have a problem.

hay the guy he had yet to hear about enermax failure and wanted evidence - i never said they pop more than any other psu nor that enermax are not to be trusted.. just saying that it does happen that's all buddy

- although personally i wont go anywhere near an enermax lol
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Sorry, i should have made it more clear, i wanted evidence of enermax's killing components, as i say unless its a disproportionate amount i don't think it matters if a few die here and there. Although you say you heard of a few people who lost motherboards so perhaps very occasionally enermaxs do kill components...?
 
Doh! - It's a 'feature'

Hi guys,

call of the 'witch-hunt', I think I found out what this sounds is :)

My new ENERMAX PSU makes a strange "zap" sound, when turned on!

This sound actually is valid for all our active PFC ATX12V 2.2 PSU's. IE NOISETAKER II, LIBERTY & FMA II.
The sound arises only, when you do a cold start and is no malfunction at all. This is unavoidable, because the PFC circuit (power factor correction) is started. Before we and other PSU manufacturers had always in stand-by mode +5Vsb and PFC active. We have changed this for all our active PFC ATX12V 2.2 to +5Vsb only. Removing the active PFC from standby increases the standby efficiency from less than 20% (zero load, just +5Vsb line active) to more than 50%. Therefore you have not heard this “zap” from our older lines. This start in any way creates such noise and can not be "silenced". But since it is for your money (your electricity bill) and only half a second long, we hope you can accept it as a feature and not a malfunction.
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Phew! . . . so there ya go, false alarm! :o :D
 
I've had the Enermax Liberty 500w modular running in my pc for about a year now and had no problems with it at all. I was getting some random shutdowns but i think that musta been something wrong in windows as since i reformatted i haven't had a problem.

In the last year i've run sli setups, overclocked Opterons both single and dual core and its still stable as a rock.

May have been a dodgy one but i've never had or noticed the clicking noise.
 
Just a quick update,

I have had a few late nights over the weekend, stressing!

I hooked up the Liberty to a little P3 system (all passive) and had it running over the weekend, on the end of my desk. While I sat there reading the web I could hear a little 'buzzing' sound coming from the enermax, hmmm I thought, whats that?

powered off the P3 system and checked the mains cable was firmly inserted, yup no problem, powered up again, click, click, click (piezo) and booted fine and was silent again, cool. 15 mins later the same thing happened 'buzz buzz buzz'.

I have a few new PSUs here from ANTEC so I hooked one of those up to the little P3 system and it was sweet as, very quiet, no clicks at startup, and ran totally silent for hours and hours . . .

I called up Enermax today and had a chat with a guy there, told him about the sounds I was hearing, he asked me where I bought it (overclockers.co.uk) and he said no problem, send it back to us and we will mail u back a new one the same day.

I found myself (for the second time in a few days) standing in a looooong queue at the post office, finally got served and was unhappy to be charged £13.92 for postage to milton keynes.

Can we claim back postage?
 
Had 3 620w liberties die on me - the last one taking out my whole AMD opteron setup.

Taught me three things

- never trust the 'overvolt/undervolt protection a PSU supposedly provides.
- Never trust Enermax to power any of my setups again.

:mad:
 
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