Customer Reviews

Antec PHANTOM 500 12V 2.0 500W ATX Power Supply

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I bought this to try and silence my PC (Athlon X2 4800+, 4 WD hard drives, XFX 7900GT). It worked superbly - in 12 months, with the default settings, the fan never came on. The powersupply never got particularly hot - warm (like the bottom of a laptop) but never HOT. So the fan didn't come one.

No power problems at all with this supply - good power on both 12v grounds. Not like my last setup.

Still, it's nice to know that the fan is there to kick in if something were to happen. Kind of like an insurance policy. I'd buy this again if I were building another system, and I've been recommending it to all my friends who custom build.

This model is not fanless. It uses what Antec calls a "Hybrid fan design". Basicly, it allows you to set a temperature at which the fan will come on.

I was happy to find how easy it was to purchase the antec Phantom 500. It was the same price as the auction sites and i didnt have to worry about warrentees or pay delays. Thank you Amazon for making this product available and I hope you will continue to have more items for sale! :)

This Antec Phantom PSU is the best i've found out of the so called "silent" PSU's. With 500w of true power it is more than enough for the average desktop. You will never realize how loud your pc was until you swap your power supply for this unit. Combo this with antec's P180 case and you'll have a pc so quiet you wouldnt even know its on. This is my second purchase of this unit. The first broke after a bad power surge that fried my AVR/battery backup surge protector most everything that was connected to it. The PSU stopped working but the rest of my pc was saved from the surge. I had the previous one for 2 years before I bought another. Before you purchase this go to the gym and work on your bench press and preacher curls because this sucker is heavy.

This was just what I needed to make my PC whisper quiet. I have after-market cooling for my graphics card and CPU, the only thing left was the PSU. When I installed the Phantom 500, my PC immediately became so quiet you can't even tell it is turned on. Ambient case temp never goes highter than 35C. Great product!

The fact that the power supply can operate fanless (or almost)is not necessary an advantage; usually the power supply can take out some of the hot air from the system... since this is fanless most of the times, this will not happen. As a result, the other fans of the system have to do more work. So, you will not hear the fan from the power supply... but you will hear the others. Never the less, assuming that the efficiency of the power supply is 85% at the maximum power (which is never true since the max efficiency never happens at the max load and this IS the max efficiency - probably when the PS is cold), there are still about 88W to be dissipated... through the chassis - most of them... so the temperature of your whole system will increase. Bottom line is that I bought it on an impulse... but I kind of regret buying it; a dual fan PS would do a much better job for the system. Furthermore, the power supply is usually placed on the top of the system... where the hot air is going so it is placed in the optimal position to cool the system (as the air flows from front to back and bottom to top).

Never the less, as it was, my system with the old PS (one fan) is still quiet, the noise from the fan being exceeded by far by the noise coming from the hard drives and DVD when spinning.

Conclusion: don't buy fanless as you will anyway need fans in your system; buy dual fan PS. The big diameter fan will generate less noise and also help cool your system.