What is the Best 600W+ PSU?

Antec High Current Pro HCP-750 Review

Manufacturer: Antec
UK price (as reviewed): £152.24 (inc VAT)
US price (as reviewed): $154.99 (ex tax)

Antec’s High Current Pro series sits at the very top of its extensive range of PSUs, and is billed by Antec as being designed for high performance computing. To this end, the series boasts high-current, heavy-gauge 16AWG wiring, which Antec claims increases efficiency, and a double-layer PCB for enhanced stability.

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The series, which is manufactured for Antec by Delta, also sports SLI and CrossFireX certification, which is handy given that the HCP-750 boasts six 6+2-pin PCI-E connectors – more than any other PSU in this group test. This sounds great on paper, but we’d advise caution if you’re thinking of building a 3-way SLI or three-card CrossFireX system around the HCP-750, as you’re unlikely to be able use anything more powerful than three GeForce GTX 560 Ti 1GB or Radeon HD 6950 1GB cards. Aside from its bevy of PCI-E connections, the HCP-750 also plays home to six Molex and a generous nine SATA connections.

With all the connections on offer, we were pleased to see that the PSU is modular; the case even indicates which 12V rail powers each of the modular sockets, enabling you to easily make sure that your components are balanced across the four chunky 40A-rated 12V rails. Also providing power to the sockets is a 3.3V and 5V rail, both of which are rated at 25A, as well as a 0.5A -12V rail and 3A 5VSB rail.

Our testing revealed the HCP-750 to be perfectly stable across all its rails at all the load levels we used for testing. Even at 100 per cent load, its 12V rails all output almost exactly 12V, which is an excellent result. Our one concern was the admittedly less important 5VSB rail, which dipped to 4.8V under full load. This is still within the specification, though, and unlikely to cause any problems given that the 5VSB rail is, in practice, most important when the PC is in sleep or standby mode.

Efficiency was a major highlight for the HCP-750 too – at 50 per cent load, the unit proved to be 92 per cent efficient. This dropped a little to 90 per cent when the PSU was at 100 per cent load, meaning that the unit had to draw a reasonable 836W to output its full 750W. The fan on the PSU was also pleasingly quiet throughout testing.

The slight chink in the HCP-750’s armour is its 12V output ripple, which we measured at 45.5mV. This is still well below the maximum ripple of the ATX spec but poorer than the competing Be Quiet! Dark Power Pro P9 650W and Enermax Modu 87+ EMG600AWT.

This doesn’t prevent the HCP-750 from being a great PSU, though, as it’s 100 per cent stable, highly efficient, quiet and has oodles of connectors. You pay for the privilege of owning one, of course, but long-term stability and peace of mind is worth the price.