Specifications

The unit, according to Antec, meets the 80 PLUS standard certification. However this is partially true since 80 PLUS tests with 115V while this unit supports only 230VAC power input. So it may be that the unit has above 80% efficiency but with 230VAC, where efficiency gets 1-1.5% boost compared to 115VAC. According to our humble opinion Antec should not mention the 80 PLUS standard at all and just state that the PSU has over 80% efficiency. However the fact that most users are familiar with 80 PLUS, pushed Antec to make a reference to 80 PLUS. Looking at the other characteristics we see that the warranty period is the standard one for all products sold in the EU, two years, the dimensions are restricted, so the PSU will be easily installed in every chassis and finally the price for EU standards is quite low. If the VP550P performs well then the price/performance ratio will be high.


There are two +12V rails and they can handle almost the full power of the PSU. This grants many usability points to the small PSU since a strong +12V rail is what all modern systems demand. The minor rails are also fairly strong for the 550W of the unit's capacity.

Cables & Connectors, Power Distribution

The connectors of the PSU are sufficient for its capacity. Cable length is also satisfactory, the only exception being the one that holds the 24 pin ATX connector, which is only 500 mm long. We would like it to have 600 mm length (although we seriously doubt that anyone will use this PSU in a large case). Regarding the distance among the connectors, this is compatible with the ATX spec recommendation of 150 mm. Finally all connectors use 18AWG wire gauges which is the recommended size. The only thing sacrificed here, in order to lower production cost, was sleeving on all cables and unfortunately nowadays the unsleeved cables look pretty weird/awful.


With only two +12V rails proper power distribution gets tricky. You have to separate the EPS connectors from the PCIe ones and at the same time not overload any rail. In this case the EPS connector is separated from the PCIe ones but the first +12V rail is overloaded with connectors. We would choose to add some of the peripheral connectors to the second +12V rail, in order to reduce load on the first rail.