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Tagan BZ900 900W

This is a guest post by Anthony Hong of Overclockers Online.

Manufacturer: Tagan

As of lately, Tagan’s BZ series of power supplies have been making quite a few waves. Tagan, in partnership with ABS Labs, or more commonly, a Newegg subsidiary have put together quite the monster of a power supply. For starters, Tagan’s BZ series comes in nothing lower than 700W and all the way up to 1300W.

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Although this is Tagan’s first appearance at Overclockers Online, they are by no means new to the power supply scene. Since the unlikely beginnings found at a Computex dinner party, their presence has grown far beyond simply power supplies to include high performance cases and drive enclosures.

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Tagan’s BZ power supplies, or ‘Below Zero’ series are cooled by a single massive 13.5cm LED fan. Today we will be looking at Tagan’s brand new BZ900, a unit that simply does not shy away boasting 900W of clean, solid, and efficient power.

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. 03 Apr 08 | Reviews, Technology | Comments (0)

Antec Quattro & BFG 8800GT OC2 Problem Update

Here is Antec’s reply. Not only do they have no solution, but they’re letting customers hang up and dry in the meantime with no timeline. The problem has been isolated to nVidia and Antec, along with other PSU manufacturers, are saying it’s up to nVidia to come up with a BIOS flash that might fix the problem. Here’s Antec’s customer service reply:

Antec’s TruePower Quattro power supplies, the TPQ-850 and TPQ-1000 have way more than enough power to run an 8800 graphics card and are SLI certified by NVIDIA. The actual issue with the graphics card and System Sentinel is a communication issue. The Supply has plenty of power, but the card is not handling it properly.

This problem is not only with the Antec supply. Other brands of power supply are having these issues as well. There have been reports of power supplies from Corsair, ThermalTake, Enermax, Rosewill, OCZ, XCLIO, and Silverstone not working with these cards as well.

Nvidia SLI certified our power supply to work with the cards. Months after the launch of their card we started to have problems with the 8800GTX and the Quattro supplies. We implemented a fix at this time because we were the only company with the issue. This fix worked for any user having the 8800GTX issue.

Then Nvidia released the (G92) core series of graphics cards GTS/GT. These cards sometimes do not work with either the original or fixed version of our power supply. We have been researching the issue, and Nvidia has been testing this issue in their labs. The problem appears to be a hardware interaction. With the right (wrong?) motherboard/graphics card/PSU, this issue occurs. Many combinations work, however (we’ve got an off-the-shelf Crosshair+8800GT 512+Quattro 850 system running perfectly in our lab), so changing any of the components could possibly make the system work. It seems that a bios fix/flash is going to be the final solution, but we don’t have any definite answers at this time.

As this problem develops, I’ll keep everyone posted on what happens with me!

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. 20 Feb 08 | Reviews, Technology | Comment (1)

Antec NeoPower Blue 650W

AntecFor those keeping track, I wasn’t very happy with the way my Antec Quattro 850W PSU was working with my BFG 8800GT OC2. However, the Antec NeoPower is a line that I have trusted for many years. It has powered my most powerful machines to my average working rig without any problems whatsoever. What sets this power supply apart from the rest are the blue LEDs that will illuminate your case. A part from that, the Antec NeoPower Blue is no different than your other high efficient Antec power supplies. You get great performance and a great price.

The Antec NeoPower comes with 5 years warranty (80,000 hours MTBF) which is more than enough for your average PC user. That works out to 9 years of continuous operation. Much like the Quattro, the NeoPower is modular. It has the connectors necessary to power your 3870X2 to 8800Ultra.

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When loaded to 93% maximum capacity, the NeoPower maintained voltages within a 1% of the ideal. Gone are the days where a 5% variation was acceptable. The unit also maintained the same level of performance when subjected to a hot environment with an exhaust air temperature of 45C.

Nothing with this power supply comes out at me with yellow flags. It’s a simple looking power supply that does it’s job. The lack-luster finish may be something you like. Personally, I’m fine with gunmetal. It looks sharp in my eyes. You’ll also be thankful for the fully sleeved cables. This is a far better investment than running the power supply chassis through some electroplating/polishing to a get a mirror finish. All those blinging power supplies just get tucked inside my case where it can’t be seen. With the blue LEDs, it will illuminate the inside of your machine. If you have a window, then the more power to you.

There was a time not to long ago that we scoffed at the idea of spending $100 dollars on a high power supply, when we ridiculed the prospect of cheap performance power supplies. However today, power supplies positioned at lower price points manage to offer superb performance while sacrificing neither aesthetics nor features, and this of course, is a trend we are quite happy to see.

Click here for the full review.

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. 07 Feb 08 | Reviews | Comments (0)

Antec Quattro Power Supply Problem Update

quattroIn an earlier post I mentioned my Antec Quattro 850W could not supply enough power for my BFG 8800GT OC2. After exchanging a few emails with their technical support, which has an amazing response time, I have an update which should give us an idea as to when we can expect a fix to the solution.

Here’s their reply:
Simon,
Hopefully in the next 2 weeks we will have a solution for this issue.
Thanks,
XXXX XXXX
Antec Customer Support

I will be getting in touch with them in 2 weeks time and we’ll take it from there.

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. 31 Jan 08 | Reviews, Technology | Comments (2)

Antec Quattro 850W Power Supply Problem

quattroSome of you may remember the Antec Quattro 850W review Anthony wrote at the end of October. it was a great power supply for given it’s price and features. As a matter of fact, it was so well like that Overclockers Online gave it the Editor’s Choice Award.

Did we speak too early?

I met up with Anthony at the end of 2007 to pick up the power supply from him as I was building a new machine. The system consists of an Asus P5E3 motherboard, Intel Q6600 G0 Stepping processor, Patriot Memory 2GB DDR3-1333 memory modules, my new BFG 8800GT OC2 video card, an Antec 900 case, a Thermalright HR-01 CPU Cooler, a few hard drives, a Lite-ON 20X DVD+/-RW drive, and my Logitech diNovo Media Desktop. This isn’t exactly a power hungry machine and I would have surely thought the 850W power supply by Antec would be more than sufficient, however, I was wrong. After installing Windows XP SP2 and the nVidia drivers, I was immediately greeted with a Sentinel warning from nTunes saying my card was not getting sufficient power. How could this be? A quick search on google and I found out I wasn’t the only one with the problem. It’s common among Antec users, and some other manufacturers.

I contact Antec via online support and was quickly an update on the situation. Here’s what they have to say:

Simon,
We originally noticed this problem with the 8800GTX video cards. Nvidia tested our power supply with the cards to certify them for SLI testing and they passed with flying colors. We sent out a fix when we saw there was a problem, the fix worked and now we are noticing that the GTS and GT cards are not working with this new revision. We currently do not have a working version of the power supply that will work with the Nvidia 8800GT and GTS cards. We have recently found that this problem is also with other brand PSU’s and Nvidia video cards. Our engineers are working with Nvidia on a fix for this issue.
We apologize for the inconvenience.
XXXX XXXX
Antec Customer Support

Antec definitely hasn’t lost me as a customer but I’ll be waiting for when this issue gets resolve so I can get an RMA! Until then, my Cooler Master 500W iGreen from July of 2006 is running my system.

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. 29 Jan 08 | Reviews, Technology | Comment (1)