Final Thoughts and Conclusions

Antec’s High Current Pro Platinum series is their new top class line of power supply which features all modular cables and is 80Plus Platinum certified.  The PhaseWave design eliminates most of the internal bridge wiring by placing the two DC-to-DC converter boards right on top of the modular cable DC connector board, which along with the LLC resonant design helps boost efficiency to Platinum levels. 

The HCP-850 Platinum PSU demonstrated excellent voltage regulation and very good efficiency along with delivering very clean DC outputs.  It’s also a quiet power supply, especially at low to mid power levels thanks to Antec’s Thermal Manager, advanced low voltage fan controller and dual ball bearing fan.  And to top it all off you get an excellent assortment of all modular cables, universal AC input with Active PFC, ErP Lot 6:2013 Compliance, Intel Haswell ready, and a 7-year warranty. 

Antec’s new OC Link allows connecting two HCP Platinum PSUs in tandem to supply power-hungry systems. Under normal operating conditions OC Link functions perfectly as advertised. However, we found that if the OC Link “slave” PSU doesn’t start up (unplugged, turned off, etc.) or encounters a fault and shuts down (overload, high temp, short circuit, etc.) the system continues running with just one PSU, which could potentially put some expensive hardware at risk.

The HCP-850 Platinum proved to be a very good premium grade power supply and competes head-to-head with the top competition in it’s class. We can certainly recommend it as a stand-alone power supply but we’re not ready to adopt OC Link just yet… hopefully soon.

The MSRP for the Antec High Current Pro 850W Platinum power supply is $239.95 USD but you can find it online for less. ($208.98 USD @ Directron.com, August 2013).

Strengths:
• 850W continuous DC output at 50°C
• Excellent voltage regulation (±2% on three primary outputs)
• Very good efficiency (80Plus Platinum)
• Very clean DC outputs (low AC ripple)
• Latest PhaseWave design with LLC resonant topology
• Very quiet at all but the highest power levels
• Combined +12V outputs can deliver the full 850 watts
• Fully modular, sleeved, and “Stealthy” cables
• Six PCI-E connectors can support multiple high-end graphic adapters
• Dual EPS connectors (8-pin and 4+4-pin)
• Achieves ErP Lot 6:2013 compliance
• NVIDIA SLI-Ready and AMD Crossfire ready
• Intel Haswell & C7 ready
• Active PFC with universal AC input
• Antec AQ7 7-year warranty and lifetime global 24/7 support

Weaknesses:
• Potential problem with OC Link in the unlikely event the “slave” PSU doesn’t turn On or shuts down due to a fault

Our thanks to Antec for sending us the HCP-850 and HCP-1000 Platinum PSUs to review. We will keep you posted as Antec works on resolving the issue with OC Link.
 

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