Antec Earthwatts Gold Pro 750W PSU Review

Its been a while since we have taken a look at any power supplies from Antec, so when a new Earthwatts Gold Pro power supply darkened our doorstep a few weeks ago our interest was piqued. It is semi modular, 80 Plus Gold Certified and ships with a 7 year warranty. But is it worth your time and more importantly your money? The new series of Earthwatts Gold Pro units ship in three capacities. A 550 watt, 650 watt and 750 watt unit are available and it is the highest capacity model in our labs for review today. SKU# - GB Model MSRP ex. Vat / Inc Vat 0-761345-11615-2 EA550G Pro £58.32 / £ 69.99 0-761345-11619-0 EA650G Pro £62.49 / £ 74.99 0-761345-11623-7 EA750G Pro £74.99 / £ 89.99 Review photography handled in house at KitGuru with a Leica S series medium format camera and S series prime lens. Please do not use any of the images within this review without express permission. The Antec Earthwatts Gold Pro 750W unit ships in a grey and yellow box with a high resolution image of the fan and grill on the front of the box. The rear of the box gives a list of key selling points along with an efficiency and fan graph underneath. The power supply itself is shipped protected inside a thick airpadded sleeve - shown above. The supply has a total of four 6+2 pin PCIe connectors (2 across dual cables) - enough for a powerful SLi or Crossfire system. All the cables are flat, ribbon style apart from the main ATX cable, which is sleeved. This power supply is semi modular, so some cables are hardwired, while the remainder are modular and plugged into the chassis when needed. Antec also supply a little 'product overview' as they say it saves paper and helps the environment. There is also a regional specific power cable included in the box. The Antec power supply is crafted from 0.8mm SECC Steel and has an anti scratch black coating in place. The yellow accenting is quite attractive although it might alienate a user who wants it on show inside a colour coordinated build. There is a large fan on show at the top of the chassis, behind a metal grill with the Antec logo taking pride of place centerstage. One side of the power supply is vented to aid air flow, with a power connection and switch offset to the side. As a semi modular unit there is only a small 2x2 modular connector bay at the side. There is one 4x connector for a PCIe cable, and the other three 3x3 port connectors are for the SATA and Molex cables. The EA750G Pro can deliver 62A on the +12V rail for a total of 744 watts output. Both +3.3V and +5V rails deliver 20A for a total of 100 watts. The fan inside the unit is a 120mm Hong Hua HA1225H12S-Z fan. We have seen these fans quite frequently in Seasonic units this year so it might be an early indication of the OEM partner. This unit is built around a Fluid Dynamic Bearing for quiet operation and long life. It is rated 0.58A, at 12 VDC. Maximum speed is rated at 2,200rpm, producing 73.9CFM at 32.4dBa. You will notice the unusually cut plastic cover along the left side of the fan – this is to direct the air flow at specific parts of the power supply underneath. Please be aware if the gallery doesn’t load you will need to disable your ad blocker as it interferes with the code. We can indeed see that Antec are using Seasonic as the OEM for this particular power supply. Paying closer attention it appears to be based around the Seasonic FOCUS series. Soldering quality throughout is excellent as we would expect from Seasonic. Inside are a fair few smallish heatsinks to aid with cooling key components. The power supply is using a full bridge LLC topology with synchronous rectification with DC-DC VRM’s for +3.3V and +5V rails on secondary. Input filtering starts on a small PCB with Y and X capacitors in place – moving to the main PCB for completion. Seasonic are using high grade Japanese capacitors throughout the build with a single 105c rated in the primary stage. This is rated 400v 390uF. Interestingly Seasonic have adopted two primary capacitors in their earlier higher cost PRIME units. The Prime 850W Platinum for instance uses two Nippon Chemi Con capacitors at 400v 330uF each, for a total of 660uF output. The Seasonic Titanium 850W unit is ridiculously over specified – fitted with two Nippon Chemi Con 650uF and 450uF capacitors to output 1100uF! In the secondary stage are a mixture of solid and standard electrolytics. It offers: Over Current Protection (OCP) Over Voltage Protection (OVP) Under Voltage Protection (UVP) Short Circuit Protection (SCP) Over Power Protection (OPP) Over Temperature Protection (OTP) No Load Operation (NLO) Surge & Inrush Protecion (SIP) Correctly testing power supplies is a complex procedure and KitGuru have configured a test bench which can deliver up to a 2,000 watt DC load. Due to public requests we have changed our temperature settings recently – previously we rated with ambient temperatures at 25C, we have increased ambient temperatures by 10c (to 35c) in our environment to greater reflect warmer internal chassis conditions. We use combinations of the following hardware: • SunMoon SM-268 • CSI3710A Programmable DC load (+3.3V and +5V outputs) • CSI3711A Programmable DC load (+12V1, +12V2, +12V3, and +12V4) • Extech Power Analyzer • Extech MultiMaster MM570 digital multimeter • Extech digital sound level meter • Digital oscilloscope (20M S/s with 12 Bit ADC) • Variable Autotransformer, 1.4 KVA DC Output Load Regulation Combined DC Load +3.3V +5V +12V +5VSB -12V A V A V A V A V A V 75W 0.95 3.33 0.93 5.00 5.13 12.05 0.50 5.03 0.20 -12.04 150W 1.65 3.33 1.66 5.00 10.61 12.05 1.00 5.02 0.20 -12.03 375W 3.00 3.32 3.02 4.98 28.11 12.03 1.50 5.01 0.30 -12.04 565W 4.05 3.31 4.07 4.98 42.94 12.02 2.00 5.00 0.30 -12.03 750W 4.90 3.31 5.24 4.97 57.48 11.98 2.50 4.99 0.50 -12.03 Load regulation is good holding within 1%. Antec Earthwatts Gold Pro 750W Maximum Load 833W We managed to reach around 833W before the unit would shut down gracefully, after the protection kicked in. This is around 85 watts more than the rated output, quite a good result. Next we want to try Cross Loading. This basically means loads which are not balanced. If a PC for instance needs 500W on the +12V outputs but something like 30W via the combined 3.3V and +5V outputs then the voltage regulation can fluctuate badly. Cross Load Testing +3.3V +5V +12V -12V +5VSB A V A V A V A V A V 734W 1.0 3.33 1.0 5.00 60.0 11.96 0.2 -12.03 0.50 5.02 154W 15.0 3.30 15.0 4.96 2.0 12.05 0.2 -12.03 0.50 5.01 The unit passes our Cross Load testing without any problems. When hit with 60 AMPS the +5V rail held at 4.96. We then used an oscilloscope to measure AC ripple and noise present on the DC outputs. We set the oscilloscope time base to check for AC ripple at both high and low ends of the spectrum. ATX12V V2.2 specification for DC output ripple and noise is defined in the ATX 12V power supply design guide. ATX12V Ver 2.2 Noise/Ripple Tolerance Output Ripple (mV p-p) +3.3V 50 +5V 50 +12V1 120 +12V2 120 -12V 120 +5VSB 50 Obviously when measuring AC noise and ripple on the DC outputs the cleaner (less recorded) means we have a better end result. We measured this AC signal amplitude to see how closely the unit complied with the ATX standard. AC Ripple (mV p-p) DC Load +3.3V +5V +12V 5VSB 75W 5 5 10 5 150W 5 5 15 5 375W 5 5 15 5 565W 10 10 25 10 750W 15 10 30 10 Noise suppression results are impressive, hitting a peak of 15 and 10 on the +3.3V and +5v rail respectively. The +12V rail peaks at 30mV under full load conditions. Very good results overall from this Seasonic OEM design. Efficiency (%) 75W 88.2 150W 90.4 375W 92.2 565W 91.7 750W 90.3 Power efficiency rates as very good indeed, hitting a peak over 92% at 50% load. At full load it drops to 90.3%, another stellar result. We take the issue of noise very seriously at KitGuru and this is why we have built a special home brew system as a reference point when we test noise levels of various components. Why do this? Well this means we can eliminate secondary noise pollution in the test room and concentrate on components we are testing. It also brings us slightly closer to industry standards, such as DIN 45635. Today to test the power supply we have taken it into our acoustics room environment and have set our Digital Sound Level Noise Decibel Meter Style 2 one meter away from the unit. We have no other fans running so we can effectively measure just the noise from the unit itself. As this can be a little confusing for people, here are various dBa ratings in with real world situations to help describe the various levels. KitGuru noise guide 10dBA – Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves 20-25dBA – Whisper 30dBA – High Quality Computer fan 40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refrigerator 50dBA – Normal Conversation 60dBA – Laughter 70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer 80dBA – City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal 90dBA – Motorcycle or Lawnmower 100dBA – MP3 Player at maximum output 110dBA – Orchestra 120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine 130dBA – Threshold of Pain 140dBA – Military Jet takeoff/Gunshot (close range) 160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum Noise (dBA) 75W <28.0 150W <28.0 375W <28.0 565W 31.7 750W 34.7 The large fan doesn't make much noise at all, its only when tasked with over 500 watts that it starts to spin up noticeably. At full load we measured just under 35dBa noise levels. Temperature (c) Intake Exhaust 75W 36 40 150W 38 44 375W 39 51 565W 45 56 750W 47 61 The large fan helps move a lot of air internally and at full load we measured an exhaust temperature of 61c. Maximum load Efficiency 833W 89.7 For those interested, we measured efficiency when stressing the unit to breaking point. 89.7 percent efficiency at 833W … hardly practical, but interesting regardless. It has been a while since we looked at an Antec branded power supply and the Earthwatts Gold Pro 750W is a welcome way for the company to come back into the spotlight. Its difficult to go wrong using Seasonic as an OEM partner. Build quality is high and the overall paint finish will satisfy the most discerning of enthusiast user. The only negative we can mention would be the bright yellow accenting which could clash with a colour coordinated build. Its not a huge deal, but Antec should really mute the tones a little, or consider neutral colours across all the panels. Technically, as we would expect from a Seasonic design - the Antec Earthwatts Gold Pro 750W delivered a stellar set of results across the board. Noise suppression, load regulation both rate very highly and the use of Japanese capacitors inside ensure long term stability, even under heavy load conditions. The quality cabling deserves a mention - although as I have said before it might be a good idea for Seasonic to ditch the fatter sleeved cables and opt for a universal flat ribbon style implementation, to ease the routing phase during the build. Noise levels are low, the adoption of a high grade Hong Hua Fluid dynamic bearing fan ensures long life, with reduced noise emissions. We only noticed a little fan whir when the load was consistently over 550 watts. Antec have assured me that the pricing for this unit will be £89.99 inc vat when it hits the UK. At this price, we feel this unit is very competitive - especially with the 7 year warranty. Its not quite as long as the Seasonic warranty on their 'official' branded units, but realistically that 7 years will cover two or three system upgrades. Its perfectly fine. Discuss on our Facebook page, over HERE. UPDATE: Buy from Overclockers UK for £96.95 inc VAT HERE. Pros: High build quality. quiet under load. High levels of efficiency. Japanese capacitors throughout. Cons: The yellow accenting might not appeal. 7 year warranty is a bit lower than market leaders. All ribbon style cables would be helpful for builders. Kitguru says: The Antec Earthwatts Gold Pro 750W is a very high grade power supply, and at £89.99 will target the discerning enthusiast audience looking to keep costs within a certain limit.