Today we are going to quickly look at the Antec Earthwatts Platinum 550 W. It is not really the newest power supply on market, quite the contrary, as the FSP Group Aurum 92+ platform is already some time there, it is one of the older units. On the other hand it has dropped in price and is now among the cheapest 80 PLUS Platinum certified (@115 V) units. It comes with fixed cabling and three-year warranty, actual price starts from 2800 CZK or 120 AUD.
One of the main drawbacks is power distribution. FSP uses active clamp forward topology with active rectification, however, it has group regulation with independent transformer windings and group synchronous rectification, the same as in the original 80 PLUS Gold Aurum units. Besides having four (!) +12V rails (two can often create headaches, never mind four), it has quite high power on +3.3 and +5 V rails and this platform usually did not handle crossload well each time I had these units in my hands. We will see if this one performs better later in the full review.
Other than that, for now I can tell this unit makes somewhat mixed feelings about the choice of capacitors. It is not bad, however, it is not good either ☺ Stay tuned!
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UPDATE: the full review has been published
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