Antec HCG Gold 1000W Power Supply Review

A Closer Look

Before we look at the power supply itself, the Antec HCG Gold is provided within a branded canvas covering. Although a minor point, it is nice to see this extra level of protection taken to ensure that your PSU stays free of scratches not only in transit but also presumably prior to your installation where it may be sat on a desk.

The power supply itself looks highly professional with an exceptionally weighty feel and strong external metal casing. Your immediate thoughts are that this is a quality professional design that has been assembled and designed to the highest standards.

A closer look at the case, however, does reveal something curious. It would appear that, for all intents and purposes, the Antec HCG Gold has a case within a case. – It’s honestly difficult to put into words, but hopefully, the images below will portray enough for you to understand.

Prior to having a look inside this PSU, however, I am pretty convinced that the task of partially disassembling this will not be easy!

The Antec HCG Gold is provided with a 135mm fan. This has a nice location to the top of the power supply with some Antec branding to the center. Nice large vent gaps should, all going well, produce some good airflow both in passive terms and when the fan is operating.

While there is some branding noted to this power supply, it’s quite nice, understated, and overall fits into the aesthetics well, with it being neither dominating nor overly garish.

The rear exhaust bank is well presented, with all of the available void sections being utilised for airflow. You will also note a manual ‘hybrid’ fan function switch here which allows you, when activated, to set the fan to only run when deemed absolutely necessary; a feature predominantly designed to reduce overall system noise.

As noted above, however, this is perhaps the best picture that highlights the somewhat unique exterior design as it shows that there is both an interior and exterior casing to this PSU.

The cable input bank is has each section clearly denoted for its use. Allowing a good amount of space between each port as well, so users should have little difficulty in both inserting and removing cabling.

Cabling

Antec provides you with absolute masses of cables that should easily be able to hook up everything on even the most elaborate of gaming or HEDT systems. The cables themselves come in a strong braided (almost kevlar-like) casing that should ensure that they are well protected while still being more than long enough for good levels of system management.

In something a little unusual, however, rather than denoting the PSU-end of the cable on the actual port, every cable comes with a sticker to denote which end goes where. In truth, this seems a little excessive and perhaps indicative that Antec really doesn’t want you to go wrong here. On the whole, though, it’s a nice bit of foolproofing in the design.

Internals – A Look Inside!

If you recall an earlier part of this review, we said that we suspected that it would be a little tricky getting inside this power supply. And we were right! – Put simply, it was indeed pretty much a ‘case within a case’ design, and, ultimately, it’s pretty clear that Antec does not want you poking around in here. Not, incidentally, that you should as this will invalidate your 10-year warranty.

20-screws later, however, (and yes, they were counted), we got inside!

Starting with the fan, a closer look confirms this to be a 135mm model from ‘Ong Hua’. While it is, perhaps, a little disappointing that this isn’t an ‘Antec-own’ design, we have seen this cooling solution (or variants of it) used in various power supplies in the past. In truth, despite being off-brand, it’s an exceptionally good fan and has never failed to impress us with its performance in the past. So seeing it here gives us more than a little confidence of some good results from our fan testing.

The PCB is exceptionally well organised, with all of the major components being well spaced. Therefore, this should, and all going well, result in some very positive results when the ‘Hybrid’ fan functionality is turned on, and this, effectively, becomes a mostly passively cooled PSU. The only mild grumble we have is the number of components that have been covered with a rather crude yellow plastic covering. We have no idea why this is here, and we’re sure there is a good one, but aesthetically… black would’ve perhaps been nicer.

A closer look at the main capacitor confirms, as per the features of the product, that this is indeed 100% Japanese. Manufactured by Rubycon (a well-known, highly reputable company), and rated to 105C, this is exactly what you want to see in a quality PSU.

Overall Thoughts!

On the whole, the Antec HCG Gold looks like an exceptionally impressive power supply both on the inside and outside. It speaks of a high-quality design where practically no compromise has been made in the build quality. Put simply, based on what we’ve seen so far, we expect this to perform very well in our testing.

Will it though, well, there’s only one way to find out! – Let’s get this hooked up!