Introduction: Today at Ultimate PC Reviews we are going to be looking at one of Antec s fairly new power supplies. The 850Watt TruePower Quattro. Antec have been manufacturing high quality, stable power units for many years now. Let s see how the TruePower Quattro compares. Let s take a look
Packaging: The packaging as a whole has a yellow & black colour feature. The majority of the packaging is a bright in your face yellow, while the two sides of the packaging are black. The front of the packaging is fairly simple & straight to-the-point. It consists of Antec s logo & slogan in the top left, there is also a picture of the power unit and a brief introduction text. The rear of the packaging gives some more information on its features in three languages, as well as an intro to the 80 Plus program. Upon Opening: When I first got my eyes on the power supply, Antec s Phantom power unit sprung to mind. They re both packaged the same. The PSU is packaged in very thick pieces of foam which is approximately 5.5CM thick (each piece).
The 850W Quattro: After moving the two pieces of foam off the power unit I managed to reveal it. The unit itself looks extremely nice. It is finished in a matt black with yellow racing stripes. I personally love it and think it looks great & unique. This power supply is also modular!
Cables: The PSU comes with the following cables: 1 x 20/24 Pin ATX Connector. (Non-Modular) 1x 12v 8 Pin Connector. (Non-Modular) 1x 12v 4 Pin Connector (Non-Modular) 2x PCI-E 8Pin with 2 detachable pins. (Non- Modular) 2x Molex & Floppy Cable-3 molex, 1 floppy per cable. (Modular) 1x Molex Cable 3 Molex. (Modular) 1x S-ATA Cable 3 S-ATA. (Modular) 2x S-ATA cable 4 S-ATA. (Modular) 2x PCI-E cable 1pci-e per cable. (Modular) All of the cables are sleeved in high quality black sleeving, meaning cable management will be easy and cables will get blended into the background. Something I ve not seen before is that Antec use plastic Stoppers instead of the normal heatshrink. I personally haven t seen this used before and I think it s a great improvement over the standard rubber heatshrink.
Accessories: Antec include the following accessories: 1x User Manual 1x Pack of 4 Screws. 1x UK Power Lead. Cooling: The Antec 850w TruePower Quattro is cooled by a 92mm fan. Hopefully it cools the PSU well and is gentle to the ears!
Testing: We have put the 850W TruePower Quattro through several applications to test how good it is. We have run Orthos, Prime 95, Cod2, BF2, Bf2142. A digital multimeter was used to record these results. Idle results were taken whilst in Windows XP Professional. Load results were taken during the tests. The lowest results found are displayed in the table below. 3.3V 5V 12V IDLE 3.31v 5.08v 12.23v LOAD 3.30v 5.08v 12.22v Nice rock solid rails, again supplied by Antec. Still up to their reputation I see. With regards to noise I found that the PSU was not silent but then it wasn t loud. If there was a scale from 1-10 (1 being quietest & 10 being loudest) I would rate the Antec on a 3.5. As for cooling warm air can be felt successfully exiting the rear of the unit. Test PC: E6600, Gigabyte DS4, 2GB OCZ, 8800GTX Conclusion: Pros: Very Nice Looking Unique. Packaged Extremely Well. Modular. Fairly Quiet. Great Sleeving, New Method Of Heatshrink Is Great. Rock Solid Rails. Cons: Every cable cannot be connected at once. Would be nice if there were less non-modular cables to further reduce clutter.
Conclusion (Cont.): Again, another superb power supply from Antec despite the little negatives. The power supply is awesome looking, modular, fairly quiet, sleeving job is ace and as well as the most important rock solid, stable rails. It just goes to show that Antec are still living up to their reputation, delivery high quality power supplies to the market. As you can see from above I managed to see two negatives with the unit. First of all not every cable can be connected at once there may be enough there for the average user but for an enthusiast with multiple hard drives etc it may be a problem. The second was that I noticed there were quite a few non-modular cables on the PSU itself it would be nice to see only the main cables needed as nonmodular to reduce cable clutter further. Overall I would like give the power unit 9 out of 10 stars.