Antec NeoECO 750W Modular 80 Plus Gold Power Supply Review

Antec is one of the oldest names in the business, having decades of experience in creating cases, coolers, power supplies and much more. Many of my first PC components were from Antec, and I've been using their products ever since, given I'm pushing 40 years old now, it's fair to say I've been using Antec for a long time now. Admittedly, it's been many years since I had the pleasure of testing one of their power supplies, but I know their older units were really well-made and reliable, so I'm hoping to see that still holds true. Admittedly, the NeoECO I'm testing today isn't particularly high-end, but at just £106 it's both fairly affordable and offers a good amount of power and efficiency for mid-range system builds. Antec NeoECO 750W At 750W it's far from the most powerful PSU, but if you're not running a £2000 GPU and flagship CPU, you don't really need 1000W anyway. However, Nvidia recommends a 650W+ PSU for up to an RTX 4070 and the RTX 4070 Ti should be ok with 750W. AMD recommend 650W+ for the RX 7800 XT and 750W+ for the 7900XT, depending on your CPU configuration too, of course, so you're not that limited by 750W. However, keep in mind this PSU doesn't have the 12VHPWR connector, and uses the more traditional 8-pin (6+2) connectors, but otherwise, it is packed with features like 80 Plus Gold efficiency, a DC-DC topology, Zero RPM hybrid fan mode, and more. Antec also offers it with a 7-year warranty, which is great to see. Features 750W Continuous Power™ - Guaranteed 750W of Continuous Power from Antec 100% Modular - Improves airflow and reduces clutter 80 PLUS® Gold certified - Reduce your electricity bill PhaseWave™ Design - A server-class LLC design with a synchronous rectification based on a DC-DC topology Antec Quality 7-year warranty 120mm Silent Fan－Whisper-quiet high-quality fluid bearing fan with a long lifetime Zero RPM Manager - An advanced low-voltage fan control with fan-off mode at low loads for absolute silence 99%+12V - Output for maximum CPU & GPU support CircuitShield™－Full suite of industrial grade protections: OCP, OVP, UVP, SCP, OPP, OTP, SIP, NLO High-quality JP capacitors achieve unprecedented tight voltage regulation & low ripple & noise to maximize your system performance 28(18+10) pin MBU socket - For possible future MBU connectors ATX 12V 2.4－Engineered according to the newest PSU guideline and compatible with the latest CPU generation Specifications Please check out the official product page here for in-depth features and specifications. What Antec Had to Say The brand-new NeoECO Gold Modular series was born ready for the best DIY-PC experience seekers, and it also serves exceptional performance and outstanding stability. Featured 100% full modular design and 80 PLUS Gold certification, the NeoECO Gold Modular series keeps your PC hardware installation convenient and clean. It still provides highly efficient power to your system and reduces your electricity bills. The advanced thermal control with the Zero RPM mode enables to turn the fan off at low loads to provide absolute silence. With the 120mm silent fan, the NeoECO Gold Modular can optimize the balance between cooling and noise. High-quality Japanese heavy-duty caps allow your system has more stable performance. The CircuitShield™ design serves your industry-grade protection to make your system safe in any environment. With the 7-year warranty, the NeoECO Gold Modular series will be the ideal choice for professional modders and PC gamers. Packaging & Accessories The box looks great, with a stylish image of this Eco PSU somewhat destroying the Earth... I think, a strange picture, but it looks cool. We can also see the main features, and that its Antec's 35th Anniversary! Around the back, all the main features, such as the safety features, modular design, and silent fan are clearly detailed. And there's more information on the side, showing you the power outputs of each rail, as well as the range of connectors that come included in the box. The PSU is packaged in a durable box, with two layers of foam protecting the PSU, as well as a durable bag to keep the cables nice and safe. In the box, you'll find a main adapter, as well as a bundle of cable ties and Velcro straps. All the cables are black with black connectors, and all have a flexible flat cable design, so they're going to be easy to keep neat and tidy. A Closer Look The PSU is presentable enough, but there's nothing particularly flashy about it either. The NeoECO sticker on the side has the usual Antec colours, and we can see it's a "Continous Power" unit, which is to say you can run it at high loads for extended periods, making it well suited to both work and gaming PC builds. There's good ventilation, with a large grille on the top, as well as a lot of ventilation at the rear. There's a small switch at the back for active or hybrid fan modes, and in hybrid, the PSU fan won't spin at lower loads if the PSU is below a certain temperature threshold. There is a good range of connectors on offer, but obviously, at 750W it doesn't need a huge amount of connectors but should be well-suited to systems that have either 1 x 4+4 on the motherboard and up to 3 x 6+2 connectors for the graphics card, or 2 x 4+4 on the motherboard and 2 x 6+2 for a graphics card. There's a 120mm fan for cooling, and a nice Antec logo in the middle, but overall, a pretty basic but tidy enough-looking power supply. A Closer Look - Internal Opening up the PSU, we can see the 120mm fan on the interior, which comes with a surprisingly large guard to protect some of the internal components. The fan is a Yate Loon D12SH-12. The interior looks pretty clean and tidy, with good spacing between all the components, allowing it to keep nice and cool more easily. As this PSU has a hybrid fan mode it can run completely silent at lower loads and temperatures. The AC line is nicely shielded, and while some of the soldering looks a bit rough, it's all durably done. The soldering elsewhere looks pretty great though, with all the PCBs very cleanly laid out and spaced ensuring good airflow. There are a few coils here for the 3.3v, and from what I can see, all the capacitors are Japanese too. There are two small heatsinks in here, I thought they were quite small, but then reminded myself I've been testing 1000W+ units recently, so it makes sense that at 750W, there's likely less heat being generated in here. The main bulk capacitor is a Nichicon rated for 400V and 680uf at up to 105c, it's a good quality part too, and should deal with the majority of the 12v rail requirements. Antec has used good quality components throughout, with additional 2200uf 16v caps dotted around the PCB. As well as 6.3v 1500uf. There's not really a lot else going, it's well made, but overall a fairly clean and simple interior layout. Methodology & Testing At eTeknix we take the power supply testing procedure very seriously and have invested a lot of resources into acquiring the appropriate testing equipment. For all power supply reviews, we test the power supplies with dedicated power supply testing equipment. This means we can get the most accurate results from our testing as opposed to using software benchmarks (such as OCCT) or multi-meter readouts which are broadly inaccurate. Testing Hardware Sunmoon SM-8800 Active Load Tester Stingray DS1M12 USB Oscilloscope Voltcraft DT-10L laser tachometer What the eTeknix Test Procedure Involves Testing each power supply at 20/40/60/80/100% load (with load balanced across all rails) and measuring PFC (power factor correction), efficiency (actual power divided by power "pulled at the wall") which also uses a 50% load test, and voltage regulation (deviance from expected voltages of 3.3/5/12 on the main rails). Measuring ripple with an oscilloscope at 20/40/60/80/100% load. Transient loads taken with an oscilloscope are taken from 0% to 100% on the 12v raid, 3.3v rail, and then both combined. Measuring fan speed after a stabilisation period of five minutes at each loading scenario using the Voltcraft DT-10L laser tachometer and a reflective strip on the fan. Testing each power supply's OPP (Over Power Protection) mechanism and seeing how many watts each power supply can deliver before shutting down. Any deviation from this will be explained per review as appropriate on the respective testing pages, but this methodology page will remain unchanged. Other Things to Consider We recognise that a single 12-volt cable can provide only 6 Amps before overheating (which corrupts voltage regulation and efficiency) so we used an adequate number of cables for each power supply to ensure there is no efficiency loss from poor cable selection. If there is more than one 12VHPWR on a PSU, all will be used to test their combined loads. We use the same time scale and horizontal millivolt scale on our oscilloscope for all ripple tests, that is a 20ms T/DIV (horizontal) and a 0.02 V/DIV (vertical) meaning the scale is from -80mV to +80mV, ATX spec dictates that the 12v rail must fall within 150mv of ripple and the 3.3/5 within 50mv so that scale allows us to include both 150 and 50mV peaks. (Some older PSU reviews use different scales which were later ditched as the visual representation they give is inadequate, in these reviews written measurements are provided only). Deviance is the terminology used to represent the way voltages diverge from the expected values Voltage Regulation To test voltage regulation we load the power supply to five different load scenarios that give an equal spread of load across every single rail. So that means 20% on all rails, 40% on all rails and so on. We then calculate the average deviation of each rail from its expected voltage. Ideally, anything of +/- 2% regulation is seen as a very good result. Power Efficiency Power efficiency is measured by calculating the supplied wattage divided by the wattage drawn at the wall/plug, multiplied by 100 to give a percentage. We then compare that to the particular 80 Plus certification the company claims to see if it meets that. You can see the 80 Plus certifications below, we always test power supplies at 230v. Transient Loads Power Factor Correction Power Factor Correction is the ratio of the real power flowing to the load, to the apparent power in the circuit. PFC aims to make the load circuitry that is power factor corrected appear purely resistive (apparent power equal to real power). In this case, the voltage and current are in phase and the reactive power consumption is zero. The closer the number to one the better as this allows the most efficient delivery of electrical power (Source - Wikipedia). Ripple An oscilloscope can easily measure noise and Ripple. These show how much voltage fluctuation there is on a particular rail. We tested the rail stability of the 3.3-volt, 5-volt and 12-volt rails using an identical time and millivolt scale for all graphs. millivolt ripple is measured by the peak-to-peak size of the voltage curve. The latest ATX 12-volt version 2.3 specifications state that ripple from peak to peak must be no higher than 50 millivolts for the 3.3-volt and 5-volt rails, while the 12-volt rail is allowed up to 120 millivolts peak to peak to stay within specifications. Millivolt figures are stated to the closest increment of 5 given their variability. OPP Power supplies are often quoted as having various protection mechanisms and the most important of these is Over Power Protection. In our testing, we crank up the power draw until the power supply either shuts down (meaning the OPP mechanism is present and working) or blows up (meaning it is either not present or not working). We then note the maximum power consumption before the power supply shut down, or before it blew up. Fan Speed When testing in a power supply laboratory it is difficult to take fan noise readings as the noise from the Sunmoon test equipment and air conditioning corrupts everything. The next best thing in our circumstances was reading off the fan speed with a tachometer to get an idea of the noise. The ambient temperature during testing is held constant at 22 degrees, with 1 degree of variation. Each power supply had a consistent period of 5 minutes to stabilise between each load scenario. In my experience, the following general relationships apply between noise levels and fan speeds, though it can vary greatly between the type of fan used. Below 800 RPM - Inaudible/Silent 800 to 1000 RPM - Barely audible 1000 - 1200 RPM - Audible but still quiet 1200 - 1400 RPM - Moderately noisy 1400 - 1800 RPM - Noisy 1800 - 2000 RPM or above - Intolerable Internal Components This is just an example (taken from a Corsair ax1200i) of what you can expect to see on a PSU interior. Right away, the efficiency looks great scoring above 90% at all loads and just comfortably within the 80 Plus Gold specifications. Efficiency PFC looks good, and the closer to 1.00 the better, but it's hitting best in the range of 40-80% which is where I'd expect it to be mostly used, a small drop off at 100%, but still a very strong score overall. PFC (Power Factor Correction) Voltage Regulation Ideally, we want to see this well within 3% and there's really no problem in the 12v, 5v or 3.3v rails at all. -12v is off, but since nothing really uses that and some new PSUs don't even have a -12v rail, that's really nothing to be concerned about either. Ripple The ripple on the 12V rail is a little higher than usual, but still well within the 50mv target to meet qualification, but it is consistent throughout all loads too which is good to see, as some PSUs vary quite a bit at different loads. Of course, the other rails are great, given they need to be within 150mv, and they're within 3-28mv for the most part. 3.3V 5V 12V 5VSB Over Power Protection and Max Wattage The choice of capacitors in this PSU speaks volumes here, they're clearly a lot more capable than 750W, with the unit drawing a staggering 1056.9 watts before it shuts down, so dealing with power spikes won't be an issue. Of course, sticking to 750W and below is recommended, but I wouldn't be overly surprised if this unit would pull 800-900W for longer periods without any cause for concern. Transient Loads These results measure the power supply from 0% load to 100% load on various rails to simulate a power spike from your system. Typically, we would like to see as small a spike as possible relative to the requested voltage. With modern GPUs being notorious for power spikes, this is becoming more relevant in modern PSU design. The specifications for ATX 3.0 were released in February 2022. It includes the new 16-Pin 12vHPWR connector that can deliver up to 600 W to graphics cards. These incorporate data lines for components to negotiate power capabilities with the PSU so they do not draw more power than the PSU is capable of delivering. The specification also has more strict requirements for handling spikes, two times the nominal output for 100 microseconds. 0-100% +5VSB 0-100% 12V 0-100% 12V 3.3v Cross-Loads 3.3V and 5V are tested at 10-100% loads together, and then 12V is tested in the same fashion. This shows us if the PSU is able to maintain its target voltage regulation while delivering different loads. Ideally, you want to see this within 5% deviance, but under 3% is better, and of course, the lower the better with 0.00% change being the ideal result. Again, very constant results here, with the voltages staying well within a 1% target, and while the voltage drops on the 3.3v when it's loaded, and climbs a little when the 12v is loaded, the deviance is very small and pretty much the expected result. Fan Speed This PSU has two fan modes, the first is an active fan, which operates at 800 RPM at lower loads, and peaks around 1600 RPM at full loads. The fan is audible at full speed, but it's a good quality fan that wasn't really any louder than a typical case fan. In hybrid mode, however, it stayed at 0 RPM until we hit 80% loads for a few minutes, then it started at 800 RPM, only going up to 1550 RPM when the PSU was left running at 100% loads for a period of a few minutes. Overall though, I'd be happy to leave it in Hybrid, as the PSU never seemed to actually get noticeably warm anyway, given it's only outputting up to 750W. How Much Does it Cost? The Antec NeoECO 750W Modular 80 Plus Gold Power Supply is available now from Amazon with an MSRP of just £115.18, however, at the time of writing it was listed for just £106.28. That's a good price too, in line with the likes of the Corsair RM750 (£134.99), but that's a couple of years old now, and the Antec is both newer, and features fully Japanese capacitors in its construction. You can get something similar for less, such as the Gigabyte UD750GM (£88.50) but again, Antec has better quality capacitors and is rated for continuous power, so better suited to those long gaming sessions. Overview Antec has been in the business for 35 years, and they've certainly learned a thing or two in that time. Their PSU have always had a good reputation for quality and that certainly hasn't changed here. However, I will say, this PSU does look a bit boring and the name doesn't exactly strike me with enthusiasm either. Not that there's anything wrong with NeoECO, but I think it makes the PSU sound cheaper than it is. When in fact, it's one of the best-priced PSUs of this power but still features a full complement of Japanese capacitors in its construction. It had no trouble reaching the 80 Plus Gold efficiency rating too, which is always a good sign, and the more efficient it is, the less power you'll be wasting when operating your system. Not only will that save you money, it means there's less waste heat generated, and that results in less noise from the fans. Leaving the PSU in its Hybrid Fan Mode makes a lot of sense, it's smart enough to know when it needs to be cooled, so on a hot day it may spin up at lower loads, but the rest of the time, you're PSU will be virtually silent when you're not maxing it out. For those wanting a newer Nvidia GPU, this PSU doesn't have a 12VHPWR connector, so you'll need the octopus-like cable adaptor that comes with your GPU, but it's good to power up to a 4070 or even a 4070 Ti depending on your CPU. Of course, if you're an AMD user, then the old PSU connectors are still standard there, so no issues with connectivity for the red team. It does come with all the latest safety features too, as well as a DC-to-DC topology, and from my own testing, the voltages and ripple are very consistent across all loads and cross loads, making it a very stable and reliable PSU. There are units out there with lower ripply and even better regulation, but expect to pay twice as much for them and they'll likely be in larger capacities. Should I Buy One? Antec has a very good PSU here, while not gunning for the most powerful, best named, best connectivity or even the best looking power supply, I can't actually fault its performance. I would have liked a 12VHPWR connector, but it's not like everyone needs one, and if you don't... well, it's not a problem is it!? Plus, it keeps the cost down, and for around £100 for 750W 80 Plus Gold Efficiency and reliable performance, Antec is offering value for money that's going to be hard to beat. NZXT N7 Z690