Antec High Current Pro Platinum 850W Power Supply Review

Final Thoughts

Pricing

In North America Antec’s High Current Pro Platinum 850W power supply retails for $224.99 at Newegg and and $229.99 at Amazon. In the UK I could only find it at eBuyer for £171.99. This Antec power supply comes with a 7 year warranty.

Conclusion

Antec’s High Current Pro Platinum is a very niche piece of kit. As we’ve explained this is effectively a server-grade power supply built into a consumer package and this can be seen from the quality of the construction as well as the performance. The Antec HCP Platinum 850 delivers top-draw performance across the board: in efficiency, ripple suppression, voltage regulation and stability and in terms of acoustics. Couple those with the fully modular design and the 7 year warranty and you’ve got one heck of a power supply. My only concern with this particular unit is that it seems to be identical to the HCP Platinum 1000W unit, except underrated in its official rated voltage. This probably explains why the HCP Platinum 1000W costs $230 on Newegg – that’s just $5 more than the 850W version, which seems like a small gap for 150W difference doesn’t it? Interestingly our over power protection test showed this unit was capable of delivering a mammoth 1462.3 watts before it shut down meaning you could easily run this at 1000 watts on a 24/7 basis, this again leads me even closer to the conclusion that this is just a down-rated 1000W unit – the size of it also hints at its under-rated capacity, why does an 850W need to be this big? I focus on this point because it is very important: if you want to buy Antec’s High Current Pro Platinum then just skip the 850W model and go for the 1000W model instead, for just $5 more you get an official 1000W unit making it much better value for money. If we judge the product on the price and wattage of the 1000W model it is actually very competitively priced, for $230 you get one heck of a power supply that’s worth every cent because it is literally a server-grade Delta Electronics piece of kit.

Pros

• High quality components
• Quiet operation
• Top level performance in efficiency, ripple suppression and voltage regulation
• Fully modular
• Good selection of cables
• 7 Year warranty
• Has just about every protection circuit and mechanism under the sun

Cons

• 850W unit is redundant, might as well purchase the similarly priced 1000W variant
• Is a very large power supply at 19cm or 7.5 inches

“Antec’s 850W HCP Platinum power supply may not be the smartest product SKU, but it shows us that the Antec HCP Platinum 1000W is one of the best Platinum rated power supplies on the market – even with its steep price. If you’re looking for server-grade power supply performance for your system then you’d be wise to consider Antec’s High Current Pro Platinum series, it has just about everything you could want or need in a power supply.”

Thank you to Antec for providing this review sample.