Antec Interview: Talking Power

Choosing suppliers and future PSU developments

bit-tech: You mentioned earlier that some companies got lucky with their suppliers, and you showed recently about your visit to, and use of Delta as a manufacturer, but how do you guarantee that the next batch will be the same quality and use the same components even as the last?

Antec: OK this is definitely something that, with any other supplier or manufacturer, from my perspective I would not be able to guarantee every batch. However, since Delta is our main supplier and they are the biggest manufacturer in the world, they have developed certain techniques and production methods that are just unmatched in the [PSU] supplier market. You can be definitely be sure that they have the same quality in every single unit that comes out of the factory.

They are actually the reason why our next high-end unit is coming so late now, again delayed two weeks because there is one little thing in the manufacturing stage so Delta has halted the whole production to try to make it better, and nothing continues until that is fixed and works out well. This is how they maintain the high quality they are known for.


BT: You said fans were a subjective choice, but Antec makes the CP-1000 with its unique form factor and large 120mm on the back: is that still a product that will continue?

Antec: True we haven't had an update [on the CP-1000] for a long time and its only 80Plus standard so it's getting pretty old. I'm not sure if we'll develop a whole series, although at some point I expect we'll update it to the latest standard. We certainly think about having much higher wattage levels in that form factor because it's easily possible in that huge case - a lot can be packed in, and we could produce say 1,500W, 1,750W, 2,000W models? But it's not clear now if we should need to widen the range.

BT: Does anyone really need that kind of wattage?

Antec: Well we'll wait and see how the graphics card market develops and if you need this kind of power. It's definitely better cooled with a 120mm in that direction - it's the best possible cooling for a PSU in that respect and if you want to have a highly efficient, high power and high standards product in that way, we'll consider it in the future.

BT: With ever increasing efficiency what do you see is the future for power supplies? Can you get '99% efficient'?

Antec: No, you can't. What's the future? It's difficult to say. People already talk that at some point we'll only have 12V output power and at that point you can pretty much disregard the whole efficiency topic because it'll be leagues above anything else right now. As long as we have the current ATX standard then we need to think about efficiency and with the 230V grid we've reached 92 per cent maximum and 80Plus Platinum won't be much higher. Right now it's really the top end we can reach with normal ways and not make it too expensive

BT: Having said that I talked to Cooler Master two years ago and they said the same thing about 80Plus Gold, but here we are with affordable Gold standard PSUs on the market.

Antec: Definitely, and well, next year for example we'll have 80Plus Bronze as a minimum standard because it's really just not much more expensive than a lower efficiency one, except, obviously for those designs with sub-80 per cent efficiency of course, but the market has reached a certain level now that 80Plus Bronze is very achievable and affordable. Who knows though, maybe a couple of years from now 80Plus Gold will be a standard for every power supply?

Many thanks for Chris at Antec for his time. If you've got any comments about the interview, please feel free to drop them in our forum.