Antec True Power Trio 430 Watt - Testing
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Time to put the Antec TruePower Trio 430 watt through the tests and see how it does. I'm a little shaken by the low wattage; I haven't had less the 500 watts in a long time. I've always said it's quality and not quantity of power that's important, though, so here's a chance to prove it.
The system I have put together, according to a few online power supply calculators, will draw around 350 watts, which leaves some room for expansion, but not a lot of room before it becomes overloaded. So I'm pushing this power supply at stock speeds, but let's see if it can really handle some power. I overclocked my CPU to double the speed, to 3.2 GHz, and have to be really close to the breaking point for this power supply now. Here is a quick rundown of the test setup:
For testing the idle use level, I will leave the computer alone for 30 minutes and then take the readings. The Media Center reading is going to be taken in the middle of watching a TV show. This test should provide some kind of load, but nothing that will be near full load and really stress the power supply. Finally we put all the eggs in a basket and stress the computer under a heavy load to see if the power supply can hold up.
As you can tell from the results, this power supply was able to handle the different environments with ease. All the results from all the tests were well within operating levels and I didn't see much if any fluxation. This power supply has shown us the ability to solidly run a mild computer and not be worried about power issues.
Conclusion
Today we got the opportunity to take a look at the Antec True Power Trio 430 watt. It isn't going to win many hard overclocker awards, but should make a great little PSU to power an average computer. It has enough connections to power a typical PC.
If you have dual video cards, or lots of hard drives, I might steer clear of this PSU. Antec has always been on my short list of manufacturers of great hardware that I can trust to run my PC. They still haven’t let me down; they are still delivering great products. This power supply is a great little piece of hardware and comes with a 5 year warrantee, which is a lot better than the one or two year warrantees I've seen. In five years, I'm sure you will have a new computer and probably have quad cores the base CPU.
If you're powering a basic computer without much additional hardware that sucks power, then this will be a great fit for you. The True Power Trio is a great product line and offers different products for any power requirement. The next two power outputs both offer dual card certification and will power nearly any computer.
The only downside I can really see is that it won't work for people that don't have a base level computer. Most of the time overclockers such as us use an excess amount of power to gain every little computing advantage. This power supply will crap out with high end or heavily overclocked hardware. On the other hand, if you're building a system for a non-gamer or for purposes other than gaming, you might want to consider this PSU.
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