Antec True Control 550

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Welcome to another one of my 'sermons' on what a vital component your power supply is and how it should be one of the first decisions when building your next monster. Antec has a long blood line of quality power supplies, but the extremist overclocker always wants total control of their operating environment. With the power supply that usually meant cracking it open, trying to decipher the PCB for where the line voltage adjustments were, or in a worst case scenario, adding variable pots directly to the internal cabling. Antec took a hint from the enthusiast crowd, and appeased us all with the release of the True Control 550. It takes the already formidable True Power 550, and adds variable adjustments to the 3.3+, 5+ and 12+ volt lines that are easily accessible from your front panel. My fingers are tingling already, so let's get on with it...

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Packaging and Specs

When the package came in, I was immediately taken aback at the size and weight of the box. Upon opening it, I was greeted with a 5¼" drive bay and the power supply itself.

Taking a quick tour around the PSU, we see the familiar clear bladed fans, so hopefully Hans will drop some LED's in there and we'll see a True Blue version.

 

 

Also you can see the inclusion of an external molex connector on the back of the psu next to the rear fan. You may think 'what the hell would I need an external molex for?' as I did. It came in very handy for my temporary external mounting of my radiator and 120mm fan for a while until it was relocated inside.

As always, Antec gives you plenty of molex connectors, as well as the standard 20 pin ATX and 4 pin P4 connectors. Its nice to see that they are going for style points by wrapping the monster ATX cable, and using black molex connectors, but the cabling is still coming out of the right hand side of the unit which leaves a bundle of cables visible through most windowed side panels. It also makes cable routing a pain as well by having to run the cables across your case if you want them tucked behind the drive cages.

 

Also included are the "Fan Only" connectors, as well as the internal fan monitoring cable, and the supply line for the voltage control.

Now while I don't use the Fan Only connectors since they are thermally regulated and don't play nice with LED fans, if you are going for a quiet case, then these are an available option. I would much rather have seen SATA power connectors included, I'm sure that Antec is already taking care of this on their next line of power supplies.

Let's move onto to the bread and butter of this unit. The drive bay voltage control. Antec definitely gave this a lot of thought, and the ease of having the control accessible front the front of your case, along with being an active 3½" bay is a definite plus.

The available adjustments on the front panel are for the 12+, 3.3+, and 5+ volt lines as well as fan control for the internal psu fans. The adjustment 'tool' resides in the panel to so hopefully you will not lose it, and it finishes off the look of the panel as well.

Here are the official specs from Antec:

Next: Installation and Performance >>
 

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