Antec BP450PS 450W Power Supply Review

INTRODUCTION

Antec recently expanded their BP series with the addition of the BP 450 and the BP 550. The BP series is essentially their entry level line of PSU and mainly cater to office/daily computing type of systems. There have been many attempts by a lot of companies to make an impact on this segment, but since it is very heavily price driven, it is often seen that manufacturers cut corners to save on costs. Let us hope that Antec breaks this trend and gives us something that is truly bang-for-buck.

In the review, we will be taking a look at the various features and a look inside to see what it really is.


PACKAGE AND SPECIFICATIONS:
As expected with entry level PSUs, packaging was simple and nothing flashy. The box has some basic information about the PSU, however they did miss out on one thing – the protection features of the PSU. Its one of the things budget consumers would want to know. I actually could not find this anywhere – not on the manual or official site . Hope they put this information up somewhere, at least on their website.


To run you quickly through some of the features antec boasts are the 450W of continuous power, high performance capacitors, CircuitShield (protections) and a 2 year warranty.

Some other information that was missing was the cable lengths, antec should put this data online. The cables are on a shorter side, but I don’t think that is a bad thing as it will be really unlikely that someone will use it on a full tower chassis. It should be fine, in fact good for smaller chassis. Here are the approximate cable lengths for your reference:

24 pin motherboard power connector – 42 cm
8 pin motherboard power connector – 58 cm
PCIE connector – 46 cm
Sata connectors – 4 2 cm to 57 cm
4 pin molex connectors – 72 cm to 87 cm

Inside the box we have the PSU safely concealed within a bubble wrap. As it says at the rear of the box, the PSU comes with no power cable, so you will need to buy one, might cost in about Rs 50-100, so factor that in. The unit does look pretty good and the paint job is actually pretty nice. All the cables are un-sleeved, so they saved some costs here. To be honest, I don’t mind this at all.

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As one of the above pictures indicate, the PSU does have an 8pin and a 6pin PCI-e connector, however its on the same cable. This is fairly common on entry level PSUs and you probably wont be using them together.


You can see the PSU ratings on the side of the box as well as on the PSU. It uses dual 12v rails with a combined output of 396W. One of the things that manufacturers have been doing for products in this segment is over rate their power supplies. Its good to see antec not doing that, at least by looking at their specs.


To explain my point, I got a cheap PSU that claims to be 400W, here are the 2 PSUs together. The PSU above got only 7A on the 12v rail, so it will probably poop out at about 70W! To a lot of users in india, PSUs are the most compromised component in a PC and a lot of it is down to the fact that they are very poorly understood. I don’t claim to be an expert, but here are some basic facts that you should know when shopping for a power supply.

More watts ain’t always better – Its probably pretty obvious to most, but a lot of people still believe that a xyz brand 600W PSU is always better than a pqr 450W PSU. Clearly from the above image, there is nothing stopping companies from putting any numbers on them, so don’t go by the numbers.
Power factor correction – Without any technical details, try getting a PSU with active power factor correction. It really improves PSU efficiency and even many budget PSUs come with it.
80 Plus rating – Its basically a kind of certification that the PSU meets some standards. Its always good to have one of these, but some lower end PSUs might now have them (but it is still possible that they have 80+ efficiency).
Obviously there is a lot more to it, if you guys need any assistance, you can post a comment or go through some tech forums, you will most definitely find what your looking for.

To sum up this section, there are some concerns I got with the unit. First off, this power supply uses passive power factor correction, which aint great. It will be an efficiency killer. There are power budget PSUs that come with active power factor correction, common guys, you could have done this. Second is the rating of the 12v rails. There are 2 different ratings (21A and 18A) suggesting that 2 different rectifiers are being used here. Now that’s not the problem, the problem is that the combined power is 396A – 33A. This somewhat suggests that the combined rating is limited by some other component and not these rectifiers. This could be the transformers or some other component. I am still new to PSUs, so I might be wrong on this, feel free to comment.

INSIDE THE ANTEC BP 450PS
So lets take apart the casing and take a look inside and take a look at the components used in this PSU.

First impressions, the power supply is made by Channel Well Technologies(CWT) and are well known in the world of power supplies.


The fan used is a 7 blade Hong hua 120mm sleeve bearing fan (HA1223M12S-Z). Next to it, we see a large coil used to improve the power factor correction in this PSU, so clearly, it uses passive power factor correction. Now lets take a closer look at the various parts of the PSU.

FILTERING STAGE:
The first stage is the filtering stage, where the input power is filtered. Input filtering stage is important as components here protect you from voltage surges and generated interference. The filtering stage in this PSU starts right at the AC socket, where we have a small PCB holding 2 Y capacitors (blue), 1 X capacitor (yellow) and 1 ferrite coil.


On the main PCB however, we have very few components for this stage. All I could identify was an NTC (green in color), which limits the inrush current at the time of charging of the primary capacitors. There were 2 MOVs hidden behind those capacitors, not visible in the image.


Overall this stage is fine, its got almost all recommended components and I don’t have much to complain about here.

PRIMARY SECTION:
In the primary we have the bridge rectifier, which converts the AC in pulsed DC. I could not read the markings on the bridge rectifier, but it is generally not a bottleneck in PSUs. This one is not connected to any heatsink, which is also normal for a PSU of its rating.


The primary capacitors smooth out the pulsed DC. These capacitors are made by CapXon, which has somewhat of a bad reputation. The capacitors are at 680uF at 25c. These should do the job, but with so much branding done by Antec on the capacitors, I was expecting something better.


Next, the smooth DC is again chopped to a much higher frequency. This is done so that the transformer size can be significantly reduced. This is done by high frequency switching transistors. In our case we had 2 D209L power transistors that do the switching.

SECONDARY SECTION:
In the secondary you now have lower voltage from the transformer, but its pulsed. Bridge rectifiers are again used to convert it into DC. I could identify only 2 rectifiers without taking it apart, for the 3.3v line we have the MBR3045CT, which has a current rating of 30A. The this line is rated at 20A, we are good. The 5v line uses the MBR2045CT which has a rated current of 20A and as the line is rated at 18A, we are fine here as well.


Now is the time to smooth out the pulsed DC. Here there are a bunch of capacitors and pi filter coils that are being used and got to do a lot more work than the ones on the primary, hence should be made using better quality capacitors for a long life. Most of the capacitors here are made by JunFu, which is definitely not top of the line (rather near the bottom) and have a mixed reputation. I guess if they are kept cool enough, they should last a while. There are 2 Aishi capacitors in the mix, could not find a lot of opinion about them online, but from what I could gather, they do their job.


Also in the secondary we find the SDC2921 PWM controller, which doubles in as a protector circuit. It provides under voltage (UVP) and over voltage protection (OVP) to the 3.3v/5v/12v lines. I don’t see any monitoring IC (common in entry level units), so I am not too sure about any other protections offered.


THE VERDICT:

The Antec BP450PS is an entry level power supply and mainly aimed at the budget oriented consumer, so pricing plays a huge role. It is available on amazon for Rs 2350. I think for its price, antec has done a decent job. Sure, there are things that could be better, they could definitely used some better quality capacitors and used active PFC and it would have been a really good value PSU. That being said, it is correctly rated and has all the necessary components and connectors. The main problem is that for a few hundreds more, you can get other PSUs that come with better features. Antec’s own VP 450P costs just Rs 200 more and has APFC. Even Corsair’s VS 450 comes with APFC and a 3 year warranty (against antec’s 2 years). Overall I will find it a little hard to recommend this PSU, but its a good attempt by antec in the entry level market. I will rate it a 7/10, its a decent product but nothing that will shake the segment. My advice to antec would be to probably build a 400W unit that uses better components and gives higher efficiency and price it in about the same range.


Article originally posted at: Antec BP450PS 450W Power Supply Review | Tech Verdict

---------update---------
Antec is now providing additional warranty for those who have purchased their PSU between 1st July 2013 - 31st December 2015. To claim addition warranty, head over to Antec - Support
With that, the BP 450PS has 2+1 years of warranty.