Antec High Current Gamer 850W Power Supply Review

The Antec HCG-850M power supply has a retail of $149.99 in the USA and £119.99 in the UK. If we consider that you can get other 80 Plus Bronze 850W power supplies for around £75-115 the Antec HCG-850M is certainly at the more expensive end of the market. Indeed for the same money you could even bag yourself a couple of 80 Plus Silver or Gold rated power supplies at the same wattage. That leaves the Antec HCG-850M in a somewhat precarious situation. What does it have to offer that other units do not have?

Well it is clear the Antec HCG-850M has brilliant best-in-class ripple suppression, noise suppression and voltage regulation. Furthermore we noted from our results that it is more or less an 80 Plus Silver unit in terms of efficiency and it has very high levels of active PFC. The ability to turn the fan LED off and the nearly-full modular design give this unit attractive functionality too, while the 5 year warranty gives you excellent peace of mind.

On the other hand the unit only has partially sleeved cables and isn’t fully modular. Additionally the fan isn’t at all very quiet and you will certainly hear it even when spinning only at 1000RPM (when most power supplies would be quiet), at 60-100% load the power supply gets very noisy. It also is let down by what I’d say is a price that is too high. You can get other power supplies of the same calibre for much much less. There are a battery of Seasonic-OEM based 850W 80 Plus Power Supplies for £100 to £115 while XFX even do a couple of similar units for £75 and £95. That said we can see that Antec’s pricing isn’t that far out but at least a 10% reduction is needed for this unit to be properly competitive.

Pros

• Rugged “Gamer” aesthetics
• Good selection of connectors and cables
• Above its 80 Plus Bronze certification, nearly an 80 Plus Silver unit
• Fantastic voltage regulation on the major rails (12v, 5v and 3.3v)
• Good Ripple and Noise suppression on major rails
• High PFC
• 5 Year warranty
• Japanese capacitors

Cons

• Not fully modular
• Cables won’t be to everyone’s taste in terms of braiding and colour schemes
• Availability is hit and miss in the UK and USA from a lot of major retailers
• High pricing compared to the competition
• In the most part it is a loud power supply

eTeknix says: “Antec’s High Current Gamer 850W Modular power supply is a rock solid power supply that delivers clean and stable power capable of powering any high performance single or dual GPU system with absolute ease. It has very good ripple and noise suppression, solid PFC, and good efficiency. Yet the unit is let down by a combination of its uncompetitive pricing, noisy fan and lack of attention to detail on its cabling. Antec really have to tweak these things to gain an edge over the competition because right now unless you can get a good discount of around 10% on this power supply’s list price, I would recommend looking elsewhere. ”

Thank you to Antec for providing this review sample.