Antec Phantom 500 - opinions?

[Blouge]

Is the Antec Phantom 500 a good power supply? It seems to be efficient and quiet but I'm worried about long-term stability. I might even get SLI at some point. This is not NVIDIA SLI-certified like Antec Neo and TruePower are, even though it has two PCIe connectors. This worries me. Maybe a power supply with a 120mm fan is almost as quiet, yet better?

FYI it has has two +12V lines at 17 or 18 A each. Most other lines are 30 A max.

I ran 6 hours of Orthos on an overclocked CPU and the power supply got warm. But you could hold your hand against it easily. I still haven't heard the fan turn on once. I think this implies that I haven't crossed over the 200 W mark.

Is there a good software stress test for a power supply? Maybe Rthdribl?

 

[czepiel]

I havent heard anything specific to this powersupply, but when I was shopping for mine for my recent build, I read Http://www.jonnyguru.com for a few days.

Excellent site to read if you are in the market for a powersupply.

 

[ForestCat]

From what I've read it's a good power supply. I certainly wouldn't dump one (especially given the relatively high price tag) before I suspected that it was causing issues.

After reading the May 2005 review of this power supply at Silent PC Review (yup, this power supply has been around that long) I decided to go with a Seasonic S12 on my current system. It just sounded to me like, if I ever really put my system under load (200W plus), that the Seasonic would actually be quieter than the Phantom. I do like to game some and was worried that the graphics card would push the Phantom into its noisier mode.

It's a tough choice, though. We probably pay more attention to noise when doing everyday tasks than when gaming. It may be that the Phantom is quietest when it counts the most. I don't think I would regret having one and wouldn't bat an eye about hooking up an 8800GTX to it, it's just not the choice I made.

The link below is to the Silent PC Review article on the Phantom:
Silent PC Review looks at the Antec Phantom

I think part of the issue with reliability data being available is that the Phantom just isn't a high volume sales item. Even though it's been around for 1.5 years, it's tough just to find reviews of it on the web. You can find some mixed user reviews about it at some retailer's web sites, but I find most of those places are dominated by "greatest thing ever" or "mine died after two months" comments and aren't representative of the average user.