Antec Basiq VP550P 550 W

[crmaris]

Antec's new Basiq series offers affordable power supplies that are engineered for 230VAC only, to maximize price/performance. While we don't see fancy colors, sleeved cables, modular connectors or LED lighting, the VP550P features great performance characteristics and good component selection like japanese capacitors.

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[LAN_deRf_HA]

I always wondered why do the euro outlets make for better efficiency? Is there a trade off? Better for the recipient but less efficient on the production end?

 

[crmaris]

Very very briefly

Power (P) = I (Amps)2 x R (Resistance) (1)

So as Amps go up you have more energy losses (P). 230V need half the Amps of 115V to deliver the same output so according to (1) you have less energy dissipation on cables/conductors etc.

Also with 115V the APFC has to double the voltage something that leads to extra energy losses. Till now in PSUs that work only with 230VAC I find only one mosfet in the APFC while universal input PSUs need at least two mosfets (to the best of my knowledge).

Finally 115V show slightly better PF readings than 230V power input.

 

[MrMilli]

but on the other hand I think Antec with its huge experience should have followed an alternative path, e.g. use of larger heatsinks

Antec has never designed a power supply in it's life. What they basically do is go to Asia, check out what's available from OEMs that satisfies their needs and slap an Antec label on it. So all you can say is that an Antec employee failed at selecting a good (or silent) PSU. Anybody long enough in the business remembers the Antec Smart Power series and their close to 70% failure rate. Smart Power 2.0 lowered this to around 30% which was still pretty pathetic. (I got these numbers from my work so they don't apply to the world but ...). I don't know but i feel Antec is just too greedy to be able to make a good budget PSU.

 

[crmaris]

Antec and all other companies that sell PSUs but don't actually make them can set some standards, change some components or tell to the OEM what they want exactly (but this is going to be more expensive of course). Also Antec, Corsair, OCZ etc. have several PSU engineers in their staff to deal with all above.

The specific PSU, although it is of low cost, has only Japanese capacitors in its secondary and these definitively are not cheap. However I don't know if the rest units will have Japanese caps installed or will go with cheaper Teapo, Samxon etc.