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- Date:
- Wednesday, September 12, 2007
- Author:
- Paul Johnson
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
Antec TruePower Quattro 850w
Antec is a huge name in computer power supplies. Today we look at our first Antec unit, the TruePower Quattro 850. It sure has a fancy name, but does it have high quality power to go along with it and a price that will draw you in?
Overview
The first thing we are going to look at with the Antec TruePower Quattro 850w is its packaging, accessories, and documentation. While normally none of these items is a make or break item for a power supply the packaging quite often contains a lot of information about the product we are purchasing. The inclusion of an owner’s manual that provides actual information about our product is also of great help. Accessories are almost unnecessary with a power supply as the unit is self contained, unless it is modular, but there are cases where a manufacturer can include useful accessories to make installation, routing, and use more efficient.
The Quattro packaging is probably one of the most eye-catching to date. If a user is cruising down the aisle at the local Fry’s, the yellow packaging will certainly scream out for attention. At the same time the packaging is rather informative (as it has to be given what we find later) as it gives the power label (reproduced below), the 80Plus certification sticker, and the connector count. We also see that the unit is advertised as being quiet but unlike some brands the quiet is not quantified in absolute terms. The last two items of note are the Cable Management system and multiple GPU readiness. Cable management is simply another of a list of marketing terms for modular cables and as such while a feature isn't anything revolutionary at this point in time. On the multi-GPU front we see that the unit is advertised as being multi-GPU ready but the packaging does not carry any NVIDIA SLI or AMD CrossFire certifications. So a quick check of both websites is in order. At the SLIZone website there is no mention of SLI certification of any level but when we move to the AMD CrossFire site the story changes. At the AMD page we find that the unit is certified for HD 2900XT CrossFire. Now while NVIDIA’s SLI certification was first in the market, ATI’s crossfire certification program has also been growing and adding certified units as well. For the end user, the result of all of this is that with the not-so-greatly different power draws on current generation of video cards a unit certified for either 8800 level SLI or 2900 level CrossFire should be able to power a comparable setup from its competitor within reason. Given that the 2900 XT CF configured video cards do draw a bit more power than the 8800 Ultra in SLI; SLI certification is almost a shoe-in although the test programs do have some differences.
Finally, we see that the TruePower Quattro 850w comes with a 5 year warranty. This is on the longer end of warranties we have seen only being surpassed by Ultra and BFG with life time warranties. A longer warranty doesn't guarantee a better product but it does mean the company is on the hook longer so it is in their best interest to not have the user using that warranty too often.
The Antec TruePower Quattro 850w is certainly an interesting power supply. The four 12v rails have an interesting configuration as detailed above and a combined output of 64A or 768w which is good for ~90% of the possible DC output. This should make the Quattro 850w capable of powering most of today’s most demanding 12v heavy systems. In addition, the unit has a large 5v rail to support logic on multiple disk drives. These impressive output figures are coupled with a total of 4 PCI Express connectors (including 2 8 pin connectors for powering ATI HD 2900XT's in CrossFire), 8 SATA connectors good for powering RAID arrays, and 9 Molex connectors for your remaining peripherals. All of these connectors make this unit a well appointed one that should be at home in most situations. Since the unit is “semi-modular,” only a portion of these connectors are fixed, so wiring won't be a complete nightmare should your system be less demanding than the top 1% of systems out there.
Once we open the Quattro we find the usual assortment of items including the power supply, power cord, a Quattro of mounting screws, the modular cables, and a user manual. The modular cables come in plastic, to do something like maybe keep them tidy in the box? Then there is the manual. The manual checks in at 31 pages over six languages. In all six languages the manual doesn’t tell the user anything of value. This is probably the most useless “manual” we have seen to date that one page long. After reviewing the manual I have no idea why it was even included since all it contains is the installation instructions spread over 3 pages and 2 full pages of marketing! Why are there 2 of the 5 pages dedicated to marketing, we already bought the power supply? Why not actually include some sort of relevant information about the unit? Sure a lot of the information we would hope to find in the manual was on the box, but which is more likely to stick around, the box or the manual? How about at least the warranty information rather than a simple URL? It is safe to say the manual was a waste of resources on this unit.