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Antec Quattro 850W


Date
: 10/29/07 – 03:43:58 AM

Author
:

Category
: Power Supplies

Page 1 : 0- Introduction

Manufacturer:
Antec

Price:
Shopzilla Lowest Price: $164.28USD

Few manufacturers have achieved the kind of success Antec has become accustomed to and has become a name praised by everyone from the typical home user to the hardcore enthusiast and even larger businesses.

The TruePower family of power supplies has seen quite some change over the years, as one of Antecs longest running series, the TruePower family has been revised time and time again to cater to the ever changing needs of consumers. Today we will be taking at Antec's newest installment, the True Power Quattro.

Antec's TruePower Quattro series comes in 850W or 1000W, both equipped with four 12V rails, modular cables, and 80 Plus certified. The Quattro 850W is designed to not only power today's most powerful computers, but at the same time effeciently and with little environmental impact.

Page 2 : 1- Features and Specifications

Here is what Antec has to say about the Quattro 850W:

Features:

*NVIDIA SLI Certified 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

The Quattro 850W comes with quite a number of connectors, all the better to take advantage of its 850W output capacity!

Taking a look at the side, the UL number is registered to Enhance. Traditionally, Enhance based units perform incredibly well, so we should be expecting some good things from Antecs newest offering!

Page 3 : 2- Package

From the looks of racing inspired the box, the Quattro 850W will be anything but a plain grey box.

The side panels highlight key features and specifications.

The back of the box goes into a bit more depth in English, French and Spanish.

Opening up the box, Antec has included a power cable, bag of screws, instruction manual and of course, the power supply and modular cables.

Taking a closer look at the Quattro 850W unit the exterior is finished in fairly matte black and accented with yellow racing stripes.

Unlike most power supplies today which utilize the potential of larger fans, the Quattro 850W utilizes a single 80mm fan located at the rear of the unit.

A nice touch on Antecs part is the fully sleeved black mesh cables which do an excellent job keeping things neat and tidy.

The Quattro 850W is equipped with a total of four PCI Express power connectors; two 6 pin power connectors and two 6+2 pin power connectors, each of which are powered individually by one out of the Quattro's four available 12V rails.

Today with the falling prices of hard drives, it is not uncommon to find multiple hard drive setups whether for the performance gain, storage, or even both! The only limitation being the number of power connectors! Antec has included a total of
eight
SATA power connectors with the Quattro 850W, after all you can never have too much storage!

Next, we will be opening up the power supply!

Not much is truly visible beyond the enormous heatsinks used to cool the unit, but then again, we are dealing with a single 80mm fan cooled unit! But one thing we can see is through the acetate cover is a lone Nippon Chemi-con 500V 470uF primary capacitor! For the most part, capacitors are nothing to be excited about, in fact beyond electronics and computer hardware, excitement resulting from a mere capacitor might constitute for a disorder, but when it comes to power supplies, the components make the unit, and the use of Nippon- Chemicon capacitors really makes a statement!

On the secondary side, Antec has used a wide array of Teapo capacitors, while not Nippon- Chemicon quality, still incredibly respectable and capable capacitors.

Page 4 : Testing

While our load tester consisted of a large array of wire wound resistors is in the process of taking shape, in order to simulate system load, we will be using peltiers. The reason for this is because when using an actual computer system there is no way we could accurately measure how much load we are putting on the power supply without some very expensive equipment.

The total load on the 12V rail is approximately 576W while the 3.3V and 5V rails will be loaded with approximately 104W totaling 680W or 80% of the Quattro 850W's total output capabilities.

Prior to any official tests, the units will run with no load for two weeks or approximately 336 hours at an operation temperature of 21°C (room temperature will vary throughout this period) as a burn-in period. We will be running two sets of tests, a cold and a hot test, but both under loaded conditions. This is to reflect different conditions the power supply could potentially encounter within an enclosed system. Cold tests will run with an exhaust temperature of 21°C and hot tests will be run with an exhaust temperature of 45°C. All temperature and voltage readings will be recorded with two separate digital multimeters.

The Antec Quattro 850W did an excellent job holding its voltage output throughout both the cold and hot tests and while the output did drop noticeably more than other units we have taken a look at here at Overclockers Online, this is still an excellent performing unit by anyones count.

Page 5 : Conclusion

The Quattro 850W by Antec is quite an interesting product and positions itself quite nicely in today's power supply market. On one hand, it offers excellent power regulation, low noise, modular functionalities and does so all without looking like just another grey box, but on the other hand, without a doubt, there are better performing units, quieter units, and better looking units out there. However, the Quattro 850W is a unit priced incredibly generously in the mid $100 range, which is something truly hard to match up to especially considering most high end power supplies in the 850W range retail for well above $200.

So what does this mean? The Antec Quattro 850W is a high end bargain power supply, if the term even exists, truly a testament of the meaning of value. For the price of a low end power supply, the Quattro 850W is up to par with power supplies priced in a much higher price bracket, matching them in performance and features.

Advantages

• Unmatched value

• Performance
• Modular cables
• Quiet

Disadvantages

[ul]

• Racing stripe might not suit some people[ul]

  Update Jan 1 2008
  : I tested this power supply with my 8800GT nTuner reports that this power supply is not providing my BFG 8800GT OC2 with sufficient power. I will leave a message with Antec to see what's wrong and when a fix is expected. Simon

  Update Jan 24 2008
  : I got a reply from Antec. Here's what they have to say:
  Simon,
  We originally noticed this problem with the 8800GTX video cards. Nvidia tested our power supply with the cards to certify them for SLI testing and they passed with flying colors. We sent out a fix when we saw there was a problem, the fix worked and now we are noticing that the GTS and GT cards are not working with this new revision. We currently do not have a working version of the power supply that will work with the Nvidia 8800GT and GTS cards. We have recently found that this problem is also with other brand PSU's and Nvidia video cards. Our engineers are working with Nvidia on a fix for this issue. We apologize for the inconvenience.
  XXXX XXXXX
  Antec Customer Support

  Update Jan 28th 2007
  I followed up with Antec after receiving that email and on the 26th, they send me the following message:
  Simon,
  Hopefully in the next 2 weeks we will have a solution for this issue. Thanks,
  XXXX XXXX
  Antec Customer Support
  Let's see what happens!

  Update Feb 20th
  I followed up with Antec yesterday and it looks like they are hanging me up and letting me drive. At this point, I am now stripping Antec of the Editor's Choice award. You simply can't award a product if it isn't compatible in every situation. Here's what they have to say:
  Antecs TruePower Quattro power supplies, the TPQ-850 and TPQ-1000 have way more than enough power to run an 8800 graphics card and are SLI certified by NVIDIA. The actual issue with the graphics card and System Sentinel is a communication issue. The Supply has plenty of power, but the card is not handling it properly.

  This problem is not only with the Antec supply. Other brands of power supply are having these issues as well. There have been reports of power supplies from Corsair, ThermalTake, Enermax, Rosewill, OCZ, XCLIO, and Silverstone not working with these cards as well.

  Nvidia SLI certified our power supply to work with the cards. Months after the launch of their card we started to have problems with the 8800GTX and the Quattro supplies. We implemented a fix at this time because we were the only company with the issue. This fix worked for any user having the 8800GTX issue.

  Then Nvidia released the (G92) core series of graphics cards GTS/GT. These cards sometimes do not work with either the original or fixed version of our power supply. We have been researching the issue, and Nvidia has been testing this issue in their labs. The problem appears to be a hardware interaction. With the right (wrong?) motherboard/graphics card/PSU, this issue occurs. Many combinations work, however (weve got an off-the-shelf Crosshair+8800GT 512+Quattro 850 system running perfectly in our lab), so changing any of the components could possibly make the system work. It seems that a bios fix/flash is going to be the final solution, but we dont have any definite answers at this time.

  Overclockers Online would like to thank Antec for making this review possible.

  See more Overclockers Online Power Supply Reviews here.