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.
Andyson is a company that end users may or may not be familiar with as they do not have a retail presence in North America but they have provided the basis for a number of power supplies from Hiper, Sunbeamtech, Sigma, BFG, and others. Most notably, Ultra has used Andyson for a number of their power supplies.
Neo ECO Gold ZENtastic?
The Antec Neo ECO Gold ZEN 700W is the first power supply we have seen from Antec here at TheFPSReview. However, most of our readers are probably already familiar with Antec as they are one of the long time heavyweights in the enthusiast DIY market. We have not heard much from them, however, in the last few years when it comes to power supplies. So, today it will be very interesting to see how this power supply does in our load testing. Before we get to that though, let’s see what Antec has to say about this unit:
The new NeoECO Gold ZEN series features high performance with an 80 PLUS Gold rating, achieving up to 92% efficiency and gives you savings unheard of from other power supplies. Featuring a 120mm whisper-quiet high-quality fan and CircuitShield™ Industrial Grade Protection-all backed up by our 5-year Antec Quality Warranty, NeoECO Gold ZEN series offers a highly efficient, affordable power solution.
Let’s move on now and see what we can expect when a user purchases the Antec Neo ECO Gold ZEN 700W power supply in retail in terms of documentation, accessories, cable count, rail layout, output characteristics, and general build quality.
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I agree. Antec was all I used to use for power supplies. Never had any issues with any of them.
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.
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!