I've always been a fan of Antec products and I probably always will be, their design is very elegant and stylish, but yet under that style and class is something that is made to last for a lifetime, true quality engineering and manufacture. Today for review I've got another entry into the large wattage power supply arena, and this one is from Antec as you may have guessed, it not only looks cool with its' yellow racing stripe, but offers up 850Watts of power while being stable, efficient and quiet.
Review: Antec TruePower Quattro 850Watt Power Supply
Reviewed by: Kristofer Brozio AkA Dracos
Sponsor: Antec
Tech Specs,Features or the Basic Info:
Antec TruePower Quattro 850Watt Power Supply
850W TruePower Quattro
Full throttle power
You could search the four corners of the earth for a stable and reliable power supply, but you won't find better than Antec’s TruePower Quattro! More compact than most competing power supplies of the same wattage, yet ideally suited for handling the most demanding system specs, the TruePower Quattro is designed to meet the 80PLUS certification which means that it consumes about 33% less energy than equivalent power supplies. Four 12V rails increase your system stability. The TruePower Quattro comes with four PCI-E connectors for powering one (or even two) of the newest generation of video cards. All modular cables are sleeved and labeled to give your system a clean and professional look while the racing stripe paint job adds extra style.
Features:
-Universal Input, automatically adjusts for 100V to 240V power grids
-Designed to meet the 80PLUS Certification
–Active Power Factor Correction (PFC) helps reduce electrical waste
-Supports EPS12V v2.91 and ATX12V systems
-Four 12V output circuits provide supreme system stability
–Accurate power rating allows TruePower Quattro to deliver its full rated power (24 hours a day rated
at 50ºC)
-Up to 85% efficient
-80mm low noise cooling fan
-Heavy duty protection circuitry prevents damage resulting from short circuits (SCP), over voltages
(OVP), under voltages (UVP), and over current (OCP)
-2 x 8-pin PCI-E connectors and 2 x 6-pin connectors for PCI-Express graphics cards
-MTBF: 100,000 hours
– Safety approvals: UL, CUL, FCC, TÜV, CE, C-tick, CCC, CB
-Gold plated connectors for superior conductivity
-AQ5 – Antec Quality five-year parts and labor warranty
Dimensions:
– 3.4" (H) x 5.9" (W) x 7.1" (D)
– 8.6cm (H) x 15cm (W) x 18cm (D)
Net weight:
– 5.75lbs
– 2.6kg
{mospagebreak title=
A Better Look at Things
– Outside}
A Better Look at Things
– Outside:
The packaging for the 850Watt is a bit on the bright and flashy side, something very unlike Antecs' normal subtle styling, but it works very well for this power supply.
Inside we find the TruePower Quattro all snug and protected in a styrofoam shell, a power cable, a bag of modular cables, black mounting screws, and the user manual.
I have to note this, the first things that I noticed was the main power cord, it's thick and extra heavy duty. Here's a picture of it next to one from one of my other power supplies:
Since this is a semi-modular power supply, the component power cables were of separate. Once unwrapping them they seemed a bit sparse in their quantity, but there really are lots of connections there. Five of the main connections are still attached to the PSU, they are the main power for the motherboard, a 4-pin and an 8-pin 12v CPU connection and two PCIE 6/8 connectors. The PCIE connectors are combined with a break away of two pins if need be top make them standard 6-pin type PCIE connections.
The main connections are:
2x PCIE
7x SATA
9x Molex
2x floppy power
The Antec TruePower Quattro 850Watt PSU is a very stylish black with a very cool yellow racing style stripe going all the way around the power supply.
Of course on one side we have the obligatory voltage/identification label.
On what I call the front of the PSU is where we find the modular connections, this is the side that is obviously inside of your case. There are two red colored connectors that are specifically for the PCIE cables and three black colored connections for Molex and SATA power cables. They do have very small labels on them, just in case you can't match the colors I guess… One thing to note is that there are eight modular cables, including the PCIE ones, but only five actual modular connections on the PSU itself…
On the back side we have the 80mm low noise cooling fan, main power connection and the main power switch in the form of a small I/O rocker.
{mospagebreak title=
A Better Look at Things
– Inside}
A Better Look at Things
– Inside:
What would a PSU review be without cracking it open and voiding the warranty?! So here we go…
The first thing we notice is the large black heatsinks that cover most of the top of the power supply, and the large capacitor near the front. There's also a black piece of plastic that got me curious as well…
The black piece of plastic is actually covering the thermal controller for the fan, and from this view we can see all the wires crammed in there tightly. On the other side is a clear piece of plastic protecting the other components from possibly shorting against the side of the PSU housing.
Installation, Testing and Comparison
The Antec TruePower Quattro 850Watt power supply is a bit larger than a standard sized PSU, here it is next to my OCZ ModXStream 780Watt Power Supply:
Installing it was like most other power supplies out there, a few screws and you're done, but since I installed it in my Antec P182 case I needed to switch the fan position to the front of the divider to get it to fit in there.
At the time of this review my main system was:
Intel C2D 6420
2gigs Crucial Ballistix Tracer PC2-8500
2x BFG 7900GT OC video cards
4x hard drives (2x SATA/2x IDE)
2x dvd/rw drives
4x 120mm case fans
The first thing I noticed was the lack of sound coming from the power supply, though when you first turn your system on the fan does cycle to full speed loudly then down to silent normal running speeds.
While I don't have all the fancy, expensive testing gadgets of other sites, just can't really afford them honestly, I do put my power supplies I get for review through quite a bit of testing and a lot of hard use and maybe abuse. The power supplies I get for testing are installed and left in for at least two weeks in my most power hungry system, this system is on usually 18 hours a day, everyday, doing everything I do with it. These things include gaming in SLI, and of course my normal everyday activities and running numerous benchmarks and testing throughout those two weeks to make sure the PSU gets stressed and put under as much of a load as I can for hours at a time.
The 12volt rail is the main rail we want to look at as most of your important components are running off of it and we want that to be stable, I also look at the 5volt rail as well, both are measured using my trusty multimeter several times during those two plus weeks of testing. This is done of course by using an empty Molex connector, several of them if they are available, to check to make sure the readings are the same, then everything is average out and recorded.
To put load on my system I run several things at a time, including 3DMark06, Orthos Stress Prime and Prime 95 (both using small-ffts) This combination puts a nice load on the system, and maxes the CPU and video card usage as well. Most people will never ever stress their systems the way I stress mine for review and testing purposes, so I sort of feel that if the PSU can handle it then all the better for that power supply.
So onto my voltage results:
IDLE:
12v = 12.15v – 12.17v
5v = 5.11v
LOAD:
12v = 12.18v
5v = 5.12v
You can see that the voltages bounced around a bit at idle but that is common for all power supplies to do. Something that you don't see every power supply do though is the voltage to actually go up under load, most power supplies voltages will drop under stress, but the Antec actually went up to meet the demand of the power requirements of the system under load on both the 12volt and 5volt lines.
The voltages remained well within specs at all times and overall it was very stable and rock solid while under load.
Under load I couldn't even hear the fan get any louder, but that could be in part because of the two BFG 7900GT OC video cards, when they are under load they are very loud, annoyingly loud actually…
Summary:
The Antec TruePower Quattro 850Watt power supply is quiet, stable and powerful, you can't ask for much more in a power supply than that.
It is a bit large, but that is to be expected with the larger wattages of this power supply, and other like it. One thing that did bug me was the fact of the limited modular connections on the power supply itself, you sort of have to pick and choose what you want to use in terms of connections and plan your system accordingly…
DragonSteelMods gives the Antec TruePower Quattro 850Watt Power Supply a 4.5 out of 5 score and our Recommended Award as well.
Pros:
-Looks cool
-Very quiet
-Stable and reliable
-Quality made by Antec
-Excellent warranty
-Lots of power
-Able to handle newest video cards
Cons:
-Not enough connections on the power supply itself really
I would like to thank Antec for the chance to review the Antec TruePower Quattro 850Watt Power Supply and for their continued support of DSM.
review# 285