Antec Earthwatts Platinum 550 W – the cheapest platinum unit?

Conclusion and evaluation

The Antec Earthwatts Platinum 550 W (EA-550) passed the combined and crossload testing in accordance with the ATX specification, so according to my evaluation methodology, it deserves its evaluation. There are basically three good things about this unit. It has nice efficiency, it is silent if reasonably cooled and it is not so expensive while covered with 3 years warranty. And yes, it has quite nice voltage hold-up time. So we have four in the end. That is about all.

Built quality and components used are not so bad either, even though having only quality capacitors would still be preferable, with this configuration is it nothing less but schizophrenic. Ripple suppression is good for mainstream, not for high-end. And the voltage regulation during crossload…oh man, it is so bad it barely even passed. I can only see one scenario for which this power supply is good – workstation or server with constant load (possibly BOINC cruncher) based on reasonably up-to-date platform as this unit needs some draw from +3.3/+5 V rails, but it must not be too high. But not too low or zero either, for that reason you cannot use it as 500watt +12 V power supply as the voltage would tank.

Also having four +12 V rails makes that difficult. That is another problem. The unit has so many rails with like-a-protections that no overload and over-power protection actually works as a result, the +12 V voltage drops to unusable levels (under 10.6 V) before it turns off. And where did the OTP go? Really, high-end in 2015 with no OTP? Even in 2014 (as I’ve had the unit for some time now).

So the evaluation for Antec Earthwatts Platinum 550 W as high-end unit is as follows:

• components used: −4 p. (− for bad capacitors, − for thinner wires, − for lack of gold-plating)
• built quality: 6 p. (− for solder balls and messy soldering)
• voltage regulation: −13 p. (− for combined loading, − for crossloading)
• ripple: 2 p. (− for combined loading, − for crossloading)
• efficiency: 12 p. (+ for higher efficiency, + for crossloading efficiency)
• hold-up time: 24 p. (+ for longer voltage hold-up time)
• others: −9.5 p. (− for not working OPP, – for not working UVP, + for cable tie)

If we would say the price was 2700 CZK, than the price per value ratio would be 100×17.5/2700 = 0.65. So after three high-end units, we can see the Antec is just in the middle of them and it seems it stays that way even if we compare price per value ratio.

Pros	+ high efficiency (even under crossload) + reasonable price + silent (when cooled properly) + good voltage hold-up time
Cons	− terrible voltage regulation, esp. under crossload − below-average ripple suppression − OPP and UVP is not working − bad capacitors scattered among quality ones
Be aware of…	/?\ crossloading and overloading of this unit

Thanks

I thank the Antec company for providing the Antec Earthwatts Platinum 550 W unit.

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