Antec always made a pretty good basic PSU, bar some manufacturing faults in one or two product lines at one time.

If it as new as you say the low amperage is to be expected on the 3.3 and 5v rails, as most modern systems use 12v heavily. I would use it with a i3/ HD7750 kind of combo rig at max, maybe a i5/HD7750 combo depending on the amount of hard drives and such. The Green series seems to be pretty good quality.

Don't let the low amperage scare you too much, on a quality PSU anyways. I believe this model was made by Seasonic (Antec used several different OEM's) and it is a quality PSU. I can tell you that my new Seasonic PSU is limited to 120-Watt total output on the 3.3V and 5V lines combined. My P3 850 system with a GeForce4 Ti 4200 running full out only draws about 75-Watts total and of course that doesn't take into account losses or 12V. Early Athlons may be a different story though.

Antec's a quality PSU make from my experience. I have a very similar Antec PSU myself (also 430W) that's lasted almost 10 years without any major repair (made in '06). Only thing I've had to do with that unit was replace the fan on it. 😀 As far as what system would go best for this PSU, I'd say something like an i3 or a C2D setup would work best.

Just keep an eye out for the voltage readings. On 5V heavy systems, you will see the 5V reading drop and the 12V reading increase. Problematic machines are fast Athlon XP 3200+ systems for example. I've seen modern Power supplies drop the 5V down to 4.3 and the 12V up to 13.3.

Pentium III systems should not be a problem when using modern power supply. I've certainly never had one, they simply don't consume enough power to cause issues.

Thanks all. Good to know the quality is ok, and that it can power systems such as P-III's
It's going inside my P-III-933mhz with Voodoo3 today.

philscomputerlab wrote:

Just keep an eye out for the voltage readings. On 5V heavy systems, you will see the 5V reading drop and the 12V reading increase. Problematic machines are fast Athlon XP 3200+ systems for example. I've seen modern Power supplies drop the 5V down to 4.3 and the 12V up to 13.3.

Pentium III systems should not be a problem when using modern power supply. I've certainly never had one, they simply don't consume enough power to cause issues.

Aren't Bartons designed for mobos with +12V AUX?

PSU's are actually an more or less unknown field for me.
What is a 5v heavy system? And is there a page which explains what PSU ratings for what type of system?
Thanks in advance. 😀

Snayperskaya wrote:

Aren't Bartons designed for mobos with +12V AUX?

Nope. Bartons are designed for 1.65V 😀

From where the current for this voltage comes from, is up to the motherboard. Late models do indeed have an 12V connector. But many boards do not.

brostenen wrote:

PSU's are actually an more or less unknown field for me.
What is a 5v heavy system? And is there a page which explains what PSU ratings for what type of system?
Thanks in advance. 😀

You just got to read the labels. Old PSUs have 30 or 35A on the 5V. Newer ones 15A. But newer ones have much more A on the 12V rail.

5V heavy system is system that draws most of the current from 5V rail.

Yes, they run on lower voltage, but isn't the 12V scaled down to feed the CPU?

I've always wondered why is that modern PCs had to transform the voltage twice (one on the PSU, one on the mobo).

philscomputerlab wrote:

You just got to read the labels. Old PSUs have 30 or 35A on the 5V. Newer ones 15A. But newer ones have much more A on the 12V rail.
5V heavy system is system that draws most of the current from 5V rail.

That I am aware of. Just what type of systems (computers) are 5V heavy?
That is what I don't know much about.

On older systems the 5V rail is the one scaled down to feed the CPU. It was changed to 12V when CPUs started drawing too much power, since you can transfer the same amount of power with a lower current (and lower current circuitry is easier and cheaper to make - needs fewer rail, thinner lines, etc.), as power can be estimated as P=V*i (voltage times current)

I believe Athlons on motherboards that scale down the 5V lines to feed the CPU are the most 5V heavy systems... I think dual-P3 systems are probably 5V heavy as well, and maybe even higher end Coppermine/Tualatins when heavily overclocked.

5v heavy systems would then be something like P-Pro, P4-Socket-478 and really early Athlon systems (600 to 1400mhz)?
What about K6-2/3 systems, P3 Slot-1, P3 socket370 (from 800 to 1200) and old Pentium 75 to 233MMX?

P4 systems introduced the 12v aux CPU power connection so you can guess where it draws from. Athlon systems implemented this new ATX standard in 2002. KT400/nforce2.

Prior systems were using 5v for the CPU. When you get into 6th generation and older, these are such low power CPUs that it can be arguable where most power is being consumed. They just don't use much power in general. Older CPUs, like early 486s, actually literally ran at 5v.

By the way this topic has been discussed to death. A search will reveal a lot.

Actually the EA-430D is made by delta, hence the D at the end. Still good.

Note that Antec has their PSU's built to cost, so Delta is particularly good in this case as they're known for knowing what to cut 😉

Looking forward to use it with my P3 rig. 😀

swaaye wrote:

P4 systems introduced the 12v aux CPU power connection so you can guess where it draws from. Athlon systems implemented this new ATX standard in 2002. KT400/nforce2.

I have two boards with KT600, and unfortunately neither of them have the 12V additional power connector 🙁 I wasn't aware of the issue, but with a XP 3200+ it's quite noticeable, that CPU draws almost 80W I believe.

It's not nearly as bad as the AMD Athlon Thunderbird 1.4GHz processor, which has been known to draw up to 89W sometimes.

philscomputerlab wrote:

I have two boards with KT600, and unfortunately neither of them have the 12V additional power connector 🙁 I wasn't aware of the issue, but with a XP 3200+ it's quite noticeable, that CPU draws almost 80W I believe.

Sounds like they went exceptionally cheap with those boards. Maybe the voltage regs are iffy to begin with. Time to go shopping for a new old motherboard. 😀