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Antec Neo Problem

C

culthuu

n00b
Joined
Nov 3, 2004
Messages
28
I have one of the original Antec Neo 480W modular power supplies. It’s been running my ASUS A8N-SLI board with a 3800 X2 and a single nVidia 7800GT for over a year reliably. Two weeks ago in the space of two days I installed Windows Vista Business and a BFG 8800 GTS video card. Vista installed just fine but when I installed the 8800 the next day the system wouldn’t boot. No fans, no beeps, nothing. The only sign there was power was the LED on the motherboard. After removing the 8800 and putting the 7800back in the system still wouldn’t boot. I checked the power supply, the processor, the memory and everything seemed to be OK. I was sure the motherboard was bad but then I said I should try it with another power supply and it worked. I swapped power supplies and the system is working fine. Strangely enough the Antec Neo is working just fine with the same 8800 in my Intel D975XBX with a Core Duo 6600.
Despite that I purchased a new Thermaltake Toughpower 700W power supply for the 8800 system and pulled the Antec out. I’ve seen on this forum that there are problems running the Antec Neo with ASUS boards but my question is whether or not the Neo power supply is somehow failing slowly or if it’s safe to use it in another system. I mean it was running the ASUS board just fine and now it won’t do anything in that system. That tells me something has changed. I’d rather not have to ship the Neo back to Antec but now I’m wary that something internal like the capacitors are breaking down and I’ll be stuck with a doorstop if I keep it. Any ideas or suggestions?
 
Donate the Neo to your local computer parts recycling program.

I had five of them. They're all dead now, and the last one took a motherboard and a (thankfully cheap) graphics card with it. Based on that experience, and numerous postings by others on Internet fora, I believe that the Neos have serious reliability issues.
 
i had my neo 480 for a while and it was stable. then one day, i turned it off, and it wouldn't turn back on. Tried it in another system and it did fine. stable once again. I just bought a hx520 and paired that up with my asus board and no problems.
 
culthuu said:
I’ve seen on this forum that there are problems running the Antec Neo with ASUS boards but my question is whether or not the Neo power supply is somehow failing slowly or if it’s safe to use it in another system.
Click to expand...

Your problem can be summed up in one word: Fuhjyyu. The original Neopower is a Channel Well built unit, full of heat hating Fuhjyyu caps, with really slow fans. As such, they fail often due to the overheated caps popping. These are very good units when recapped with decent stuff, however. Yours is probably salvageable by a recap, if you're good with a soldering iron.

The compatibility issues with Asus boards only affect the newer Neo HE line, which is OEM Seasonic and better quality.

Your Toughpower is a better PSU than one can get from Antec at present IMO. It's still a Channel Well built unit, but Thermaltake learned from Antec's mistakes and had them use Samxon caps instead of Fuhjyyu. Antec has completely gone over to Seasonic, but are still mostly cheaper designs.
 
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