Exclusive: Antec Signature 850W
by Christoph Katzer on May 7, 2008 2:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
Internals
Opening this unit is easier than we thought. There are six screws to remove, after which you just lift up the top plate. You will be greeted with a view of the backside of the PCB that holds the filtering stage and the primary side of the power supply. A few connections need to be disconnected and then you can remove the first section. The whole power supply can now slide open, which removes both the sides and the rear. The upper part that contains the primary side is fixed to the rear, which holds the jack for the power cord. The transformer and secondary side are located on the second PCB, which can be easily disconnected as all of the fixed wires go through the little opening in the side.
The filtering stage is packed, leaving no room for additional parts. In the upper picture on the left bottom side, we can also see the additional circuit to create the 5Vsb voltage. The primary side features two bulky main capacitors made by Rubycon. Both are rated with 390µF and 450V at a high temperature of 105°C, which is rare these days. Right after the caps one can see the connection that leads to the second PCB.
On the second PCB, we find the transformer in the top corner. Right on top of the large heatsink in the middle there is a temperature diode that will be responsible for the fan speed through the fan control unit. There are Nippon Chemi-Con capacitors all over the secondary side. Under the small copper plate we find the two VRM that are responsible for the 3.3V and 5V rails. Pushing all the cables aside, we found another UL number that leads us to a company called Jiangmen Glory Faith PCB Co. Ltd., the manufacturer of the PCBs.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
23 Comments
View All Comments
PeteRoy - Monday, May 12, 2008 - link
Power supplies might be a very critical component in the system but they are also the most boring component.I thought power supplies reviews are only found in unpopular computer websites.
hansmuff - Friday, May 9, 2008 - link
"Looking at performance, we saw voltage drops on the lower voltage rails as well as on the 12V rails. All of the rails perform well within specs but a drop of up to 5% is not small.""The Signature series definitely left its mark today with very good performance"
Huh? If I dish out that much money for a power supply, I will not even consider one that drops 5%. And how can that be called "very good performance"?
This PSU has some good characteristics, but my take-away from your review is "don't bother with this until (1) the voltage drop problem is verified to be fixed and (2) it drops not voltages, but $100 off it's price".
mindless1 - Tuesday, May 13, 2008 - link
There is no reason to reject a power supply for 5% drop. Specs exist for a reason, that the powered components MUST also perform properly within the spec.What do you feel you gain with a PSU that has a hypothetically perfect 0% drop? Absolutely nothing. The drop is even less significant today with fewer and fewer parts directly powered by 12, 5, or 3.3V rails. Instead most now have buck conversion inbetween that can accept far more than 10%, letalone 5% deviation.
I do agree the price is a little excessive, although if someone is spending enough to actually need a PSU best at 400W+ output level, they have spent quite a lot on the rest of their system as well. Many overclocked non-SLI gaming systems stay far below 300W consumption.
deathwalker - Friday, May 9, 2008 - link
This review certainly goes against the tide when it come to my experience with Antec over the last 10 yrs. My experience has led me to the feeling that when I bought a Antec product the results was generally that it was overpriced and it under performed.mongoosesRawesome - Wednesday, May 7, 2008 - link
This seems completely overkill except for maybe triple SLI setups - which are also overkill.A good 500W PSU or even less should be plenty even for even mid/high end setups.
Efficiency is all well and good, but if people end up buying large PSU's which aren't efficient at the lower wattage's it's all just for show.
eetnoyer - Wednesday, May 7, 2008 - link
power supply reviews for less than 5% of people who will ever need them (eg. care)? I would venture to guess that the number of users that are in the market to build a nice HTPC and are looking for a quiet low output power supply is greater than the number of ubersuperultramaxgodofgear power supply users.MrOblivious - Thursday, May 8, 2008 - link
Because no one cares. Seriously. It is the same reason why you see people looking at, reviewing, and talking about a Porsche when less than 5% of people will buy one. People don't read about random run of the mill power supplies so it makes no sense to produce reviews people won't read for the website or the brands themselves. Sorry.strikeback03 - Thursday, May 8, 2008 - link
People might read about the Porsche for fun, but they check Consumer Reports when they are trying to decide between an Accord and a Taurus. In this case I'd guess even fewer people care about the high-end power supply than the high-end car - a power supply isn't that exciting until it powers something else you have.The bigger reason is that the companies that send power supplies for review tend to send their biggest and "best".
MrOblivious - Thursday, May 8, 2008 - link
Those assumptions would be incorrect. I literally have companies begging me to take lower powered products in for review all the time and from the page counts people DO NOT read the lower powered offerings. It really is quite simple.strikeback03 - Friday, May 9, 2008 - link
Well, I suppose Johan could be lying when he states that the companies only prefer to send him big units. And I suppose the companies could be sending people to the comments here to ask in every review of big power supplies for reviews of smaller units.