Antec Neo ECO GOLD ZEN 700W Power Supply Review

[Paul_Johnson]

Antec Neo ECO GOLD ZEN 700W



One of the most prevalent companies in the consumer power supply realm, and general enthusiast PC realm, is Antec. Antec is a company that has been kicking around the PC DIY market since 1986 and in that time frame has become one of the most widely known brand names. In addition to power supplies, Antec has product lines that include cases for work and play, cooling solutions, lighting, and other accessories. Over the years Antec has used a number of OEM providers for its power supplies including HEC, CWT, FSP, Enhance, Seasonic, Delta, and recently Andyson. The unit we will be looking at is a mainstream product in the guise of the Neo ECO Gold ZEN 700W (model NE700G Zen) which is built by Andyson...

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[Terminus]

Thanks for the review! I've always liked the Antec brand and product line. I've used 4 of their power supplies in pc builds in the past, going back to '05 thru '09. Glad to see Antec is still at it.

 

[Niner51]

Thanks for the review! I've always liked the Antec brand and product line. I've used 4 of their power supplies in pc builds in the past, going back to '05 thru '09. Glad to see Antec is still at it.

I agree. Antec was all I used to use for power supplies. Never had any issues with any of them.

 

[Space_Ranger]

Thank you for the review Paul. With nVidia driving their users (in suggesting that 750w be the minimum for the 3070, 850w for the 3080), wouldn't this be a unit that is underpowered for the current generation of GPUs (both nVidia and AMD)? I wonder if the days of getting a 650w - 700w PSU and calling it a day are over.

 

[David_Schroth]

Thank you for the review Paul. With nVidia driving their users (in suggesting that 750w be the minimum for the 3070, 850w for the 3080), wouldn't this be a unit that is underpowered for the current generation of GPUs (both nVidia and AMD)? I wonder if the days of getting a 650w - 700w PSU and calling it a day are over.

I'm sure Paul can clarify a bit more (or even provide a better answer), but quite frankly, I believe that the PSU recommendations are on the high side of what is actually required to operate the current generation of video cards. Let's take the RTX 3080 as an example. In Brent's overclocking review, he measured it as pulling 540W at the wall. If you assume a 90% efficiency level, then it's delivering a bit under 500W of power to the system. If you had a real 700W supply, that gives you plenty of headroom/excess capacity such that I would not personally worry about it. The 3090 may change that some - I've got one here and Brent just got one, so we'll have power numbers on them as we get to them in the review backlog.

Paul's next review that publishes is the main reason that I think there's so much wiggle room factored in.

 

[MacLeod]

Man that's a PSU name I haven't heard in a while. They were pretty big when I first got into this thing of ours back around 09. They made good cases and good PSU's. I think one of their lines were bulletproof Delta models. I'd actually thought they might have gone out of business tho since it's been several years since I've seen any of their stuff around.

 

[Paul_Johnson]

Thank you for the review Paul. With nVidia driving their users (in suggesting that 750w be the minimum for the 3070, 850w for the 3080), wouldn't this be a unit that is underpowered for the current generation of GPUs (both nVidia and AMD)? I wonder if the days of getting a 650w - 700w PSU and calling it a day are over.

Those recommended numbers, at stock speeds, have always been exaggerated. I have not seen anything from this generation to indicate anything different. It would be nice to see some test beds that can truly isolate the card draw through the PCIe connectors and PCIe slot with hardware readings so people knew what the real draw numbers were rather than the inferred and reported. I think people would be a bit surprised on it all things considered.

 

[Space_Ranger]

Those recommended numbers, at stock speeds, have always been exaggerated. I have not seen anything from this generation to indicate anything different. It would be nice to see some test beds that can truly isolate the card draw through the PCIe connectors and PCIe slot with hardware readings so people knew what the real draw numbers were rather than the inferred and reported. I think people would be a bit surprised on it all things considered.

Thank you Paul!