Reviews for Antec SmartPower II 400 Watt ATX12V Power Supply

Shhhhhh..........

Strengths: Silence, stability, dual 12v rials, SATA and PCI Express connectors, cheap for Antec.

Weakness: Only 5 molex. hardwired connectors.

I have been running this PSU 24/7 for about 6 weeks. I run it in an XP3000 w/ 1.5gb PC3200@333, Nvidia 6200, 2 hard drives, 2 opticial drives, universal card reader/floppy. I have lots of PCI and usb devices going, but basically, this wattage is a bit overkill for me. I was so impressed with this unit that I bought the 350w version for my gaming rig. On the 350w I'm running an XP3200 and heavily overclocked Nvidia 6800.
Basically, I believe this is Antec's bottom of their line. I know that it is very cheap for antec at $70. The 500w model has quick connect molex,sata,pci-e, etc connectors. You only have to add the connectors to the power supply that you need. This saves the wadd of wires from all of the connectors that you don't need to run your particular rig. The 500w version also has wrapped connector cables to lessen the cable mess. Unfortunatly, the 400w model that I am reviewing has neither of these features. All of the connectors are hard wired in, and none of the connectors wires are wrapped. There is definately much more though involved to keep down the cable clutter. I definately would have liked to have seen more than 5 molex connectors. As far as psu's go, this one is fairly large. I had to pop out my optical drives to give myself enough room to install this thing. If you have a smaller case, you may want to consider the 5.9"W by 6.1"D by 3.4 H dimensions.

What this thing has going for it is the push/pull air flow design that makes the psu fans virtually silent. With normal operation, only the inside fan pushes air out thru the psu, thru the dormant outside fan. The unit is literrally whisper quite. I was so inspired by the decible impact this PSU had on my living room home theater pc, that I got the other one for my gaming right. When the system is loaded, the external fan will kick in, in theory, and when the psu is fully loaded it have read that the fans can get much louder. Fortunately, for myself, and most likely you, our non-dual core/non-sli dual card will come nowwhere near taxing this psu enough to make the fan kick on or up. Of course the draw back to this is that the psu moves very little air. If you are one of the folks who rely's on your psu to move a large quantity of air, this psu is not for you. My temperatures definately rose, but I had a little head room, so it's not a concern for me.
For the record, the unit comes w/ a 3 year manufacturer warrenty. It is rated at 80,000 hours "Mean time between failure".

The dual 12v rails is a big plus for stability, and capacity.

I literally did not know that it was possible for a psu to be this quite. I was inspired to replace by fan cooled Nvidia 5500, with a passively cooled 6200. Between the new psu, and losing the graphics card fan, my living room home entertainment/theater PC is whisper quite. I love it. I have never sought out a silent PC before, but now that I have tasted it, it's like DSL/Cable modem, You can never go back to 56K. I will never go back to a box full of whining performance fans. Now it's all about finding the correct minimum setting in bios to quiet my cpu and system fans way down. If you are tired of PC noise, this is the PSU for you. If you can just get the rest of your system fans to be half as quite as this psu, you'll have to put your ear up to the case to hear it. I'm serious.

The bottom line is I am very pleased with my purchase. I would do again, if I had to do it over. This is a nice PSU to consider if you can see yourself building up your system down the road. I am confident the 400w model could easily handle SLI dual power hungry graphics cards and a overclocked dual core cpu with all the fans and accoutrements that go along with such a fine item as a dual/dual rig. The reason I went with the 400w instead of the 350 is it was only $10 more. I am very pleased with the bang for the buck ratio of this newest acquisition.

I would have gladly given 5 stars if the connectors were detachable, and wrapped. Boo-hiss for this lack, but a very solid, very silent choice in all other regards....

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Antec SP400 400W

Strengths: Works well & quietly

Weakness: Documentation merely adequate, not confidence inspiring for n00bs.

Is a great companion to the Thermaltake Swing case. System is super quiet until DVD-R drive spins up... It sounds like a bag 'o bolts in a dryer compared to the rest of teh system.

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Disappointed

Strengths: Quiet, variable speed fan, worked fine (while alive).

Weakness: Expensive, died after 10 months, slow RMA

I built my PC with the Antec TX640B due to the good reputation of Antec. The price even after rebate was at a significant premium compared to the "cheap" alternatives. 10 months later, the SP400 died. The RMA process is slow and they don't offer a replacement with my credit card as a guaranty for sending in the defective unit. So in addition to all the trouble of replacing the power supply, I had to buy a different one since this is my main pc. So from my experience you might be better off in terms of quality and service by looking into a generic power supply. Because they are not standing behind their product, I will for sure not touch anything from Antec again.

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Good value for the money

Strengths: Quiet, dual 12v rials, SATA/PCI-Express connectors, price.

Weakness: Molex connectors could be of better quality. Modular cables wouuld be a plus.

I have been running my PC with Antec SmartPower 350W PSU for over two years. I am running on Athlon XP 2500+ CPU, 1GB SDRAM, ASUS A7N8X-X motherboard, 2x hard disks and 1x DVD burner. Combination of Antec PSU and silent Antec Sonata case provides very quiet performance. Everything went well until recent when I started getting failures during power-up and sudden reboots. I tried replacing CPU and motherboard but nothing worked. Replacing the power supply solved my problem. I do not need much more power, and dual 12V rails provide much better load balancing between components.

SP-400 PSU runs whisper quiet, you barely can hear it. It also runs cooler than my old PSU: no surprise here because it was clearly overloaded. Although this PSU is definetely not top quality, I think overlall you get quite a bang for a buck - you get a stable, quiet, and efficient PSU. I onlt wish it had modular cables so that I could disconnect the ones I do not use.

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customer service terrible

Weakness: warrenty service no good

I bought a sp400 from Bestbuy 14 days ago and tried to install today. It did not work. I contacted the manufacturer to receive any replace or repair. But they rejected my asking because I do not have a receipt. Most company control product's serial number to keep tract the birth of their products and they give customers warrenty services if the products meet the warrenty period without any receipt but Antec dose not. Finally I lost my valuable money.

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customer service terrible

Strengths: product itself is not bad or great

Weakness: Warranty is no good.

I bought this sp400 from Bestbuy 14 days ago and tried to install today but no power -- probablely bad unit. I returned Bestbuy to exchange with a new unit. They rejected to exchange because I could not find the receipt. They recommended to contact the manufacturer. The serial number indicate the birth date for the unit and could be eligible for the warrenty. I contacted the manufacturer but they can not support without the receipt. Most companies keep tract the serial number to evaluate the warrenty without checking the custmer info and receipt but Antec does. Sometimes, keeping all receipt is not easy and finally I lost my valuable money for it.

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Great power supply

Strengths: Dual rail, low noise, stable power, lots of connectors

Weakness: Cables without sleeves, not SLI ready

Great power supply with dual rails, stable power, lots of connectors and extremely low noise. Got it on sale for less than $20 after rebates and can't complain. I have to replace the graphic card cooler because now it produces most of the noise. I would recommend it to anyone who is looking for quite and stable PSU from reputable brand and not required SLI support.

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Antec SmartPower 2.0 400W ATX12V

Strengths: Enough power to support a my computer with moderate setup and equally important to me, very very quiet

Weakness: Not I know of

I customized my system from ground up. Unfortunately, the power supply (labeled as 400W too) didn't perform as I expected: quiet noisy. So I got this Antec power supply when it was on sale. After I installed it, bang, it changed almost everything. It is so quiet comparing to my old power supply. I really like it.

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Antec SP-400 Power Supply

Strengths: almost silent, Antec reputation, Works flawlessly, lots of different types of connectors

Weakness: none

Got this unit from circuit city to replace a PSU from a compaq presario desktop pc. It's been running for a few days now 24x7 without any issues. Very happy with the purchase so far.

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ANTEC SMART POWER2.0 400 Watt ATX12V v2.0 PSU PCIE...

Strengths: This has got to be the most quietest Power Supply I have ever owned.It's simple to install, and comes with a 3Year Warranty.

Weakness: None that I can tell

This power supply was recomened to me by both a ASUS tech and also a AMD tech. Both prising Antec as #1 Power supply maker. I installed this power supply in under 10min. I do a lot of burning and Fast gaming and so far not a hitch from this supply. Sure you can get a cheaper supply but for the price of this supply and the 3 Year warranty I cant see how you can go wrong!

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