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| Antec Phantom 350W Fanless PSU |
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| Written by Mikhail Ivanenkov | |
| Monday, 18 June 2007 | |
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Page 4 of 4
Additionally, I put together a case with a few extra components that may be found in a computer enthusiast's system including lights, fans, and extra drives. Mostly this was done to increase the load on the power supply. The contents are:
At idle, the entire setup used only 130 watts. Since the "extra" 60 watt test bed consumes the same amount of power regardless of idle or load states (remember the extra drives are only connected to the power; there's no data transmission), the P4 system idles at only 70 watts. On load, that value jumped up to a mere 200 watts (or about 140 watts for the actual system). That's right, everything previously listed consumes only 200 watts on load. Substitute in a faster processor, an extra hard drive, and a more powerful video card and you could conceivably add another 100 watts. Still, that's only 300 watts total. This helps to explain how Shuttle's SFF PCs can house high end components (including a top-of-the-line video card) while operating off a 250 watt PSU. In other words, those 500+ watt models are, for the most part, unnecessary. Other idle readings include: 119.3V, 1.76A, and 210VA which, when in ratio with the 130 watt power consumption gives us a 0.62PF. This is within the specific range of passive PFC power supplies. Other load readings include: 118.9V, 2.59A, and 309VA which corresponds to a 0.64PF. Once again, aside from environmental and indirect impact, in most cases active PFC doesn't hold much of an advantage over passive PFC: it won't save you money (actually it'll end up costing you slightly more due to the extra circuitry) and it won't make your PSU any more efficient. What it will do is help "clean up" the power lines. Idle
Load
To test efficiency I hooked up the Phantom to a PSU loader (the one found in the PowerAngel review) which is calibrated to require 138 watts from a PSU. Plugging the power supply into the loader and taking the reading reported 167 watts which translates into about 83% efficiency. While lower than the 85% quoted by Antec, this is actually on par with other sites' findings. As the load increases, so does the efficiency. Some have even reported efficiency as high as 88%, which is simply amazing. Unfortunately the loader, as previously mentioned, only uses 138 watts and I don't know exactly how much my test system uses (there's really no way to calculate this unless you know the efficiency of the PSU it's connected to beforehand), so I at this point I can't test efficiency at higher loads. In terms of heat, the Phantom did get warm but never too much so; the giant heatsinks seem to be doing their job. Pros
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| Last Updated ( Monday, 18 June 2007 ) |
