Installation: 

The Antec NeoPower is pretty much the same size as any other power supply out there, so installing it into any chassis should be no problem. 

Here is a shot of the NeoPower with the lights off, so that we can get a better look at the lighting effect.  You can see how the blades make light trails from the LEDs. 

This shot shows the NeoPower installed into my Danger Den Water Box.  The lights reflect nicely off of my Raptor X hard drive.  

In contrast, here is a shot with the unit installed in bright daylight.  I like the cabling in the system as it is pretty flexible, though the amount of SATA connectors is lacking.   The NeoPower only comes with four connectors on two strands, meaning I had to set my SATA optical drive on the bottom of the case next to my hard drives in order to plug it in. 

Testing and Performance:

To test the new NeoPower, I will be subjecting it to a battery of tests. To help me perform these tests, I will be using the setup detailed below:

The first test is to measure efficiency.  In order to test the efficiency of the NeoPower, I used a Kill-A-Watt meter to measure power usage during Idle and Load conditions.  In this case, Idle is defined as sitting on the Windows desktop, while Load is defined as simultaneously running Prime 95 version 25.4 (Large FFTs) on all cores as well as 3DMark06 with all quality settings maxed out at 1920x1200. 

As we can see here, the Antec NeoPower is very close to the Corsair HX620 in terms of efficiency.  In idle, the NeoPower is one Watt better, and under load, the Corsair pulls ahead by three Watts.  This comes out to about one percent difference.  Given that the Corsair is known to be a very efficient unit, this is a good mark for the NeoPower. 

Next up is to test voltage stability.  To do this, I applied random loads to the machine to simulate a real world testing environment, while using SpeedFan to log the voltages.  Included in the load testing was:  Prime95, 3DMark06, Everest stress test, as well as transferring large files from one hard disk to another. 

According to SpeedFan, the 3.3V rail had a minimum value of 3.2V, and a maximum value of 3.216, so not a whole lot of variance there. 

The 5V rail had a range of 4.812V to 4.838V, for a difference of 24mV. 

The 12V rail, as measured by SpeedFan, showed a range of 11.776V to 11.904V, a range of 128mV.  Luckily, I found an old oscilloscope to try and verify the amount of jitter in the rail, and around 100mV under load seemed to correlate with the SpeedFan data.  This is pretty close to the maximum allowed by the ATX specification, and will likely get worse as more load is applied. 

To ensure accuracy in all testing, the 12V and 5V rails are verified by a tried and true Digital MultiMeter under Idle and Load conditions:

It is good to see the NeoPower holding very close to the ATX standards in every test. 

Conclusion:

I have to admit that I was a little disappointed to see that the NeoPower was basically nothing other than a prettied up TruePower Trio.  In many ways, you can take what you know about the TruePower Trio and apply it to the the NeoPower as well.  The question then becomes a matter of whether or not the LEDs and modular cables are worth the extra ten dollars. 

The performance of the NeoPower was admirable, with no voltage fluctuations, even on a pretty high end rig.  The 12V rail could have been a little more stable, however it was still within spec.  Efficiency is right where I would expect, and the unit should be able to put out with 80% efficiency.  I can't really say that this would be a good PSU for extremely high end SLI/Crossfire setups, though it should do fine for cards that only need a single PCI-E 6-pin connector, such as the 8800GT. 

The large fan does a sufficient job of moving hot air out of the unit, and is pretty quiet in doing so, and looks good in the process.

The only real drawback to the NeoPower is the lack SATA cables.  At the very least, they should have put three connectors on each strand, or packaged a mix of different cables with different connector configurations for the end user to decide what they need best. 

As for value, the NeoPower runs for about $140 on newegg, compared to $130 for the TruePower Trio, while the Corsair is $170.   This means it scores well in the value department as well. 

Note: Club Overclocker is now using a new rating system based on a score of 1 to 5.
Please go to our rating system page for more information.

Performance:	4 out of 5
Innovation:	3 out of 5
Quality:	4 out of 5
Stability:	4 out of 5
Aesthetics:	4 out of 5
Software/Drivers Pack:	N/A
Overclocking:	N/A
Value:	4 out of 5
Project Skill Level (5 being most difficult)	2 out of 5