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Testing: In order to test the Signature Series, we use the following testbed:
Voltages: First off, we are going to measure voltage stability. In order to run the test on the Antec, I first measure voltages at an idle state with the DMM, and then use both Crysis Benchmark Tool and Prime95 v25.6 simultaneously to simulate the highest possible load on the system. For each run, I monitored one rail with the DMM and watched for any variance, and repeated the testing for each rail.
The good news is there is absolutely no observable variance on any of the rails. The bad news? Well, there is no bad news. These rails are solid as a rock. Efficiency: Next up, we compare the Signature Series to my current standby, the Corsair HX1000 and see which one is more efficient. Power usage was measured at the plug with a Kill-A-Watt meter. Idle is defined as being on the desktop, and load was achieved by running Prime95 V25.6 and Crysis Benchmark Tool at max settings simultaneously.
The Corsair is one of the best units on the market, so I was quite surprised to see that the Antec beat the HX1000 in both Idle and Load efficiency tests. The Signature Series beats the Corsair by 3% in the Idle test and 1.6% in the load test. Very impressive. Conclusion: The Antec Signature Series is definitely a high quality unit, handily powering a pretty beefy system without a single hiccup, and even outperforming the well regarded Corsair unit. So is everything peachy in the land of the Signature Series? Almost. The performance of the unit is certainly top-notch, however there are a couple things to nitpick about. First off, is the "hybrid modular" setup. The whole point of having a modular setup is that you only have to plug in the cables that you will need. In this case, we have a bunch of cables that we "might" use that are still hard wired into the unit. Probably the biggest offender in this bunch is the 4-pin ATX cable. The other caveat is the cooling. While most large power supplies are using a down facing 120mm or larger fan, the Antec settles for a small 80mm fan on the back. What this means is under heavy loads, as the 80mm fan spins up, the noise is louder than what you would expect from many 120mm fans or the 140mm on the Corsair unit. To be fair, it takes quite a while to get the PSU to that point, we are talking 15 minutes with a 600W+ load to get the fan to spin up. Long before that time, the GPU fan has already spun up and easily overpowers the sound of the 80mm fan. The reason behind this is that Antec utilizes a PWM that keeps the fan at 15% of its maximum speed until the power draw is sufficient enough to need more cooling. So while it is a caveat, it is a pretty minor one. Overall, the Signature Series has top-notch performance and top-notch aesthetics, a high price, and a couple blemishes. Whether or not that is a deal breaker for the consumer, will be up to them to decide.
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