The new Antec VP550F, although not as good as the older VP550P that, however, only worked with 230VAC input, managed to score a pretty high price / performance ratio, easily taking first place in our performance-per-dollar graph. Its strong points are the tight voltage regulation on mostly the minor rails, since the +12V rail registered a significant drop at full load, the good ripple suppression with normal loads, the long hold-up time that was a pleasant surprise to me, its quality construction, since it was made by Delta, the resilience to high operating temperatures, and the good efficiency, especially at low loads (<100W). Delta and Antec also equipped the unit with a full set of protections, something pretty rare in the budget category. However, The VP550F does have some problems, like any other product. The most significant of all is the lousy performance in our Cross Load tests (with highly unbalanced loads on the rails), which also makes the unit incompatible with the new sleep states that Intel's new Haswell CPUs introduced. Also, the fan isn't quiet, especially at higher speeds, and the lack of fully sleeved cables will surely be a let down to many of you.

To sum up, I think that the most important thing about the VP550F is its performance in comparison to its asking price. I strongly believe that restricting its maximum output power to around 450 W would increase its rating significantly. Yes, it can deliver 550 W at even high temperatures but doing so seriously stifles the performance of its +12V rail. The Cross Load test results were really bad. A lower capacity rating would significantly alleviate the aforementioned problems. Finally, the fact that I couldn't overpower the PSU by even an additional 50 W as it caused voltage regulation and ripple suppression to get out of control clearly shows that this unit's 550 W capacity is very close to the limit of this platform.