Antec Neopower 650W Blue Power Supply Review

Output Characteristics


Everything looks really good in the output department with the Neopower 650W being able to deliver nearly all of its power through the all-important +12V rails. The 19A (228W) available on each +12V rail is sufficient to power nearly any hardware combination you might have but there is no indication of which +12V rail is responsible for what.

Upon first glance it looks like the PCI-E 8-pin would be on its own virtual “rail” with a 19A OCP circuit while the second PCI-E connector is on the same virtual rail as the SATA and Molex connectors. Finally, the CPU connector is on its own separate “rail” as well. I can’t test this theory since I have no way of loading 19A on a single rail but if the Neopower is not set up like this, I have my money on the possibility it is set up like the HX620 which means it is a single rail unit.


PERFORMANCE TESTS

Instruments Used:

Belkin 1100VA UPS
Rexus PSU tester
Fluke 187 Digital Multimeter
UPM Power Meter
USB Instruments Stingray USB O-Scope
USB Instruments Differential oscilloscope probe

Test Platform:

DFI Lanparty SLI-DR Expert
AMD X2 3800+ (at 2.6Ghz)
2GB Corsair PC4000 Ram (at 520Mhz)
EVGA 8800GTS (Stock, OC 650/1900, SLI, SLI OC 650/1800)
1x Samsung Spinpoint 250GB SATA Hard drive
Gigabyte 3D Aurora 570 Case
Pioneer DVD Writer
4X 120mm Noctua NF-S12-1200 fans

Important note:

Because of processor limitation, 8800GTS cards in SLI are seriously bottlenecked in Company of Heroes. Thus, while they still drew quite a high amount of power, when coupled with a higher end system or playing at higher resolutions they would probably draw much more.

One way or another, I would NOT recommend anything under a good 700W power supply for a pair of 8800GTS cards. These tests are done as benchmarks ONLY.