Antec Phantom Users Poll

Share your experiences about noisy computers and components, and vendors responses to your valid complaints.

Moderators: NeilBlanchard, Ralf Hutter, sthayashi, Lawrence Lee, Devonavar

How is your Antec Phantom PSU working out?

Works great, no problems
62
50%
Works, but... (provide details)
18
15%
It failed (provide details)
44
35%
 
Total votes: 124

NovionSolarius
Posts: 6
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Location: Florida
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Post by NovionSolarius » Mon May 01, 2006 10:26 am

Bought used (I think?) from ebay. Had it for about 8 months before it started acting up.

One day I discovered that pushing the power button on the Antec P180 would only occasionally turn it on. When it did not turn on, the fans would twitch and then stop moving again. Repeated pushing of the power button would not get another response until the PSU was turned off and the motherboard light went off as well.

At first it was not too big of a problem, I got it to turn on after the first few tries. The second time, it was a lot harder, took a lot more time. The third time was sheer luck. I havent been fortunate enough to have a fourth time.

Computer can restart when PSU is in this condition, but a complete shutdown means hell getting it back on.

Tested system with an Antec Truepower 2.0, it turns on fine, leading me to conclude the problem is indeed the PSU.

Not finding the serial number for some reason... If someone can tell me where to find it I'll post it

Locklear
Posts: 166
Joined: Mon Jul 04, 2005 2:08 am
Location: Norway

Post by Locklear » Sat May 06, 2006 1:55 am

Locklear wrote:S/N: DO508043xxxx (this series has 2xPCIE + 4xSATA connectors)
21.10.2005 from Santech Microgroup in Norway.
and then it was dead.

Died silently while I was sleeping. The motherboard power indicator still lights up, but it doesn't respond to the power on button.

dansun
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Oct 06, 2005 12:11 am

Post by dansun » Mon May 15, 2006 6:20 pm

NovionSolarius wrote:Bought used (I think?) from ebay. Had it for about 8 months before it started acting up.

One day I discovered that pushing the power button on the Antec P180 would only occasionally turn it on. When it did not turn on, the fans would twitch and then stop moving again. Repeated pushing of the power button would not get another response until the PSU was turned off and the motherboard light went off as well.

At first it was not too big of a problem, I got it to turn on after the first few tries. The second time, it was a lot harder, took a lot more time. The third time was sheer luck. I havent been fortunate enough to have a fourth time.

Computer can restart when PSU is in this condition, but a complete shutdown means hell getting it back on.

Tested system with an Antec Truepower 2.0, it turns on fine, leading me to conclude the problem is indeed the PSU.

Not finding the serial number for some reason... If someone can tell me where to find it I'll post it
Mine is beginning to act up in exactly the same way. The only way that i can get my comp to start is to turn off the PSU with the power button on the back of it, wait a few seconds for the charge on the motherboard to dissipate, and then turn the PSU back on. I previously posted on this thread already (page 3 i think), and my S/N is D04125500607. It has been working well for me thus far (got it in September, so that would be around 8 months w/out any problems), and this problem isn't a major inconvenience, but I'm thinking that it is indicative of future, more serious problems to come.

I'll probably need to RMA it. Anyone know if Antec pays for shipping both ways?

nici
Posts: 3011
Joined: Thu Dec 16, 2004 8:49 am
Location: Suomi Finland Perkele

Post by nici » Mon May 15, 2006 6:32 pm

Still working without any problems.. The SN is in one of my earlier posts somewhere. I think i´ve had i for nearly a year running 24/7, with a few weeks worth of exceptions when i´ve been working on it and the puters been too noisy to sleep next to..

jonjan
Posts: 30
Joined: Wed May 10, 2006 4:59 pm
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my Phantom 500 is making a cycling buzzing sound

Post by jonjan » Mon May 22, 2006 7:52 pm

I bought this PSU on 5-2-06 and have used it for maybe 5 days (I'm building a new computer)

Here is what issues I was having:
(I emailed the Antec VP of Sales, who apparently has been replacing the defective units in a stellar manner:
(his email is at this page
http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewto ... c&start=30)


...
I'll describe the issues my Phantom has..
I purchased a Phantom 500 from newegg on 5-2-2006.
The PSU is sitting on a work bench, not inside a case, and has open airflow to the room.
It is powering an ASUS P5WDG2-WS board, P4 3.8 2MB, 2x512 DDR2, and PCI quad video card (nVidia NVS400), CD-ROM (only used to install drivers), and one 120mm fan.

For the first 3 days, it worked fine, and there were no issues. Then it started to make the current noise. It makes a buzzing noise that cycles on and off. The noise starts quiet, then the sound level grows louder, and then it gets quieter again until it's silent. Right now, the silent periods last for about 3 seconds, and the noise periods last for about 6 seconds.
Putting my ear on the PSU, the sound is like a 'struggling/dying' buzzing. I can hear it from 8 feet away at least.
The cycling buzzing happens most of the time, even right now when windows is running, but there are no programs running, no cd-rom spinning, and only 1 monitor attached just showing the windows desktop.

The PSU has never gotten hot. It has always been only warm, such that i could put my hand on it for any amount of time and not be burned at all.
The PSU has never had the emergency fan come on.

Appreciatively...


the # of my unit is D06010155366


...I will post back how things progress. I hope I will be posting back with a smiley face :)

jonjan
http://www.helpusall.com stop, think, feel: help us all :)

p.s. are the Phantoms RoHS compliant? I can't find a 'yes' or 'no' anywhere.

jonjan
Posts: 30
Joined: Wed May 10, 2006 4:59 pm
Contact:

Antec service is good, but I just returned the Phantom

Post by jonjan » Fri May 26, 2006 4:24 pm

I contacted the email, and the person said he has ceased personally handling the issues. He was only doing it personally when there was an initial lot of problems.
He had another representative contact me, who was very courteous.

But I decided to return the PSU for a refund instead, so I can't say how the replacement would have been.

Best to you all
jonjan
www.helpusall.com

madman2003
Posts: 182
Joined: Sat Jan 29, 2005 9:02 am
Location: Planet earth

Post by madman2003 » Mon Jul 10, 2006 12:49 am

My phantom may have died after a little less than a year, it is a 2005 model and it was a bit hot when i checked it. I had hoped it was just the thermal overprotection, but sofar it doesn't look like it (the outside is now cold). Unfortunately some other hardware died as well, not sure what the extend is just yet.
Last edited by madman2003 on Mon Jul 10, 2006 9:56 am, edited 1 time in total.

edwardhuggett
Posts: 30
Joined: Mon Mar 31, 2003 1:31 pm

Post by edwardhuggett » Mon Jul 10, 2006 1:44 am

Phantom died a couple of days ago ...

d05015567559

purply stamps.

bought just over a year ago from UK large reseller.

Plenty of airlfow (all stock fans on low on p180). mind you we did just have a heatwave ...... (30 - 32 degrees celsius) but that was a few days ago now.

Rang antec tech support - so far no answer
Emailed antec for support ticket - so far no response

Likely to buy a seasonic of zalman for my p180 to avoid further mishap, unless antec can provide a phantom 500?

lovely PSU - just fatally flawed !!!

madman2003
Posts: 182
Joined: Sat Jan 29, 2005 9:02 am
Location: Planet earth

Post by madman2003 » Thu Jul 13, 2006 3:30 am

It could be that a thermal overheat is very slow to reset(i tried it hours later when it seemed to have ambient temperature), because i was rounding up things for an RMA and the phantom has been powering my fans for about 5 minutes now. Might build it in again, but i'll sleep a night on it.

El Doug
Posts: 103
Joined: Sun Jan 01, 2006 6:32 am

Post by El Doug » Thu Jul 13, 2006 2:16 pm

ive been running a phantom350 in an incredibly low airflow environment (often the PSU gets hot to the touch) in a high-powered gaming rig (4400+, 7800gtx, both reserator cooled) for 4 months. the last 2 weeks I have added a second 7800gtx for SLI, and still have experienced no problems with this PSU

perhaps, because i purchased it in March (later than most of you), some kind of revision took place?

i cant seem to find the serial number - its not on the side with the rail info, and the rear front and bottom are just black with no writing

elg2001
Posts: 24
Joined: Fri Jul 22, 2005 4:54 pm

Post by elg2001 » Thu Jul 13, 2006 2:47 pm

I don't visit this forum all that often, but I thought I'd chime in and let you all know that mine is working great. I've had it for about a year with zero problems.

edwardhuggett
Posts: 30
Joined: Mon Mar 31, 2003 1:31 pm

Post by edwardhuggett » Fri Jul 21, 2006 2:19 am

Well ... just got a replacement for my dead Phantom 350 .... and they replaced it with a brand new Phantom 500! (Antec netherlands>> UK)
I am taking this as a strong indicator that the 350 line is discontinued due to a fault throughout the line.
I would not recommend the 350 series to anyone myself. I am still debating whether to put the 500 in - am currently running a FSP300-60GTV.
One thing i did notice using the FSP power supply (which is medium quiet) is that I get more speaker hiss and hum on my Creative Digital setup (using optical). I did not get this with the phantom - which i presume is the fact that the higher efficiency phantoms do not put out "dirty" power onto the local ring main.

hope this is of use to people ...

marvin-miller
Posts: 13
Joined: Thu Jul 27, 2006 11:01 pm

Post by marvin-miller » Thu Jul 27, 2006 11:52 pm

I bought a Phantom 350 after reading the excellent review on this site :-)

Once installed the system would not complete the boot process. Windows would come up and as soon as Windows would access the optical drives the power supply would shut off. This happened each time the computer was started.

I have (7) 15K drives, (2) opticals and about 5 fans though so I suspect that the power supply is not necessarily faulty but instead that my workstation might have been drawing too much power causing the Phantom to shut off.

Phunny thing is though, my old 320 watt StarChoice has powered the system for years and is doing so now until I sort out what PS to replace the Phantom with :-)

Poisonsnak
Posts: 9
Joined: Mon Jul 11, 2005 4:15 pm
Location: Saskatoon, SK Canada
Contact:

Post by Poisonsnak » Fri Jul 28, 2006 2:33 pm

Purchased: July 2005 www.ncix.com
Failed: July 2006
Serial: D04125500524

After turning it off my computer immediately turned back on only no post beep, no video output, and not even any motherboard power LED on. Swapped for a SmartPower 450 from a friend (out of his Sonata II) and it works great. Tried my Phantom 350 on his system and it makes a horrible clicking/buzzing sound.

Up until now it has been a great PSU, unfortunately the loudest part of my system due to a high pitched squeal that changes with load but it seems like a great complement to the P180 and the blue light matches my scheme well.

System:
Athlon64 X2 4400+, A8N-SLI Premium, X850XT-PE, 2 GB RAM, 1 HDD, 1 DVD, P180 case with 1 fan each in PSU tunnel and main chamber

Just applied for RMA from Antec. I have dealt with them for RMA 2 times before and they are really nice it just sucks shipping stuff across the border (from Canada to the US) for warranty.

marvin-miller
Posts: 13
Joined: Thu Jul 27, 2006 11:01 pm

Post by marvin-miller » Fri Jul 28, 2006 3:12 pm

Hi Poisonsnak;

I too bought my 350 from NCIX. They didn't have another in stock so they just offered to send me a 500 for the extra few dollars. I also have a P180 so I should be seeing my new 500 soon.... I also ordered 3 of those Nexus 120mm fans to replace the stock Antec ones :D

I've found NCIX's returns policy to be pretty good and their service is excellent all in all.

Airshark
Posts: 44
Joined: Wed Aug 23, 2006 7:38 am

Post by Airshark » Wed Aug 23, 2006 7:51 am

I have a Phantom 500, mounted it in an Antec P-180 case (SPCR edition from EndPCNoise), with an AMD FX-55, four Seagate 300GB drives in a RAID array, 2GB of RAM, and a single nVidia 7800GTX (eVGA KO edition). There are two Plextor DVD/RWs in the system as well. There is one Antec Tricool 120mm fan set on low and a Nexus 120mm RSF on a Scythe Ninja HS cooling the proc.

This PSU has proven quite unsuccessful. It works fine, but it's not quiet. When running anything pushing DirectX graphics, the PSU heats up enough to turn on the fan - and then cools down enough to lower its speed, then spins up again, and this cycle repeats endlessly. It is very annoying, far worse than if it was eitehr fanless or with a constant fan.

If somebody has any ideas I can use to improve this, please let me know. Otherwise, I'm ripping it out and replacing it with a Seasonic.

jaganath
Posts: 5085
Joined: Tue Sep 20, 2005 6:55 am
Location: UK

Post by jaganath » Wed Aug 23, 2006 8:49 am

Take the stock fan out of the Phantom 500 and get a quiet 120mm (Nexus/Yate Loon/GW NCB) blowing on it? Gotta be cheaper than a new PSU.

marvin-miller
Posts: 13
Joined: Thu Jul 27, 2006 11:01 pm

Post by marvin-miller » Wed Aug 23, 2006 9:45 am

If somebody has any ideas I can use to improve this, please let me know. Otherwise, I'm ripping it out and replacing it with a Seasonic.
I installed my new Phantom 500 in my P180 case and I removed the fan from the power supply as well as the plastic bracket. This shrunk the PS back down to the original 350 size and also left a very nice hole in the middle of the PS for the P180's central lower plenum fan to blow air through.

In this way the Phantom 500 is always fanless but always cool. This will void your warranty but when I saw how well it would be cooled in a P180 with the fan assembly removed (on the PS) I realized right away that this was the way to fly.

nicoliani
Posts: 7
Joined: Wed Dec 14, 2005 1:35 pm

Post by nicoliani » Thu Aug 31, 2006 3:07 am

I have my Antec Phantom 350 outside my case. In this case I don't need an internal case fan to cool my PSU because having it outside it handless the cooling itself very good and also having it like this the heat from the PSU won't spread to the motherboard, HD and graphic card.

Adding to this I have a Zalman Reserator Plus watercooler and my PC is completely noiseless!
And I can tell you that the feeling of operating a powerful desktop PC that is completely noiseless is GREAT.

Image

surfed
Posts: 34
Joined: Thu Sep 16, 2004 10:23 am

phantom 350 Reserator1 XP2600@[email protected]

Post by surfed » Fri Sep 01, 2006 11:55 pm

I have been running my Phantom 350 24/7 for over a year now. CPU is overclocked, and cooled together with northbridge and Geforce4 TI 4400. There is a 120mm 12V@5V exhaust Fan (see Pic). I did modify the reserator, running a tube from the pump to the top of the unit so the water flows down the reserator rather than just in and out the bottom...

Image
Last edited by surfed on Sun Sep 10, 2006 2:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.

wooglin
Patron of SPCR
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Post by wooglin » Sun Sep 10, 2006 12:34 pm

updated my original post here: http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewto ... 693#161693

It's been about 19 months and my Phantom 350 is still going strong. Still running 24/7 on PVR duty per the original configuration.

nici
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Location: Suomi Finland Perkele

Post by nici » Wed Sep 20, 2006 7:42 am

I think my 350 just died. I got some hangs yesterday, i turned it off over the night and today i started it, burned a CD, and after that it hanged and then shut itself off. It didn't even have time to get warm, it was probably two minutes after starting the thing that it failed. When i turn it on it sound like a wire in a fast fan and the leds on my rheobus and my Razer mouse flicker like crazy... :shock: I plugged in the old 400W zalman thing and it works perfectly fine.. Now i have to find the damn receipt :lol:

I bought it in May 2005, so about 1½ years ago.

And that poll is getting pretty useless, i voted works fine a year ago, but now i can't vote for kaboom.

nicoliani
Posts: 7
Joined: Wed Dec 14, 2005 1:35 pm

Post by nicoliani » Fri Sep 29, 2006 2:30 am

Have Antec taking down the Phanom 350 from the sell list? Because I don't seem to find anything about the 350 on their web-page anymore.

jaganath
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Location: UK

Post by jaganath » Fri Sep 29, 2006 7:54 am

nicoliani wrote:Have Antec taking down the Phanom 350 from the sell list? Because I don't seem to find anything about the 350 on their web-page anymore.
The 350 is discontinued. They only sell the 500W Phantom now.

Plagerism
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue Oct 10, 2006 4:13 pm

Post by Plagerism » Tue Oct 10, 2006 5:26 pm

Antec still shows the Phantom 350 on their site:
http://www.antec.com/us/productDetails.php?ProdID=24350

I bought a Phantom 350 off a friend who bought it in Jan 2005, used it for about a month, and then had it in his closet for a year. I had it running my system flawlessly for about 6 weeks, then today it went "pop" and the PC shut down. My speakers made an awful buzzing sound, and the motherboard standby-power LED was still lit, but the system was off. Unplugged it for a bit and tried powering on, and it did, for about 3 minutes, then same thing. I pulled it from the case (and put back my trusty 365W Enermax), and tried powering a 120mm fan, which ran fine for 5 minutes or so, then the PSU shut itself down. I haven't yet been able to get it to power on again, it makes a brief quiet buzzing sound in the PSU, gets a tiny flicker of power out to the LEDs in the fan I have hooked up and then shuts off (cycle time about 0.5s).

gitto
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Post by gitto » Thu Dec 21, 2006 3:25 pm

My Phantom 350 which I've previously said works fine (Serial D04095162193, purchased around November 2004) died at the start of this month, so it lasted about two years.

It had developed an intermittant fault where it would take a few tries to power on, but it never concerned me much as I just left my computer on 24/7. But after having it unplugged for 2 months when I went on holidays, I came back and all I could get out of it was a slight hissing sort of noise when I tried to power it on.

The Australian distributor replaced it under warranty for me with a brand new Phantom 500, no hassles with getting it replaced or with the Phantom 500 so far.

Ackelind
Posts: 467
Joined: Sun Mar 20, 2005 1:18 pm
Location: Umea, Sweden.

Post by Ackelind » Tue Jan 16, 2007 4:16 pm

I guess you can subtract one from "Works fine" and instead add it to the pile of failing Phantom 350W's.

Mine just died after little over a year in service.
S/N: D05020045081
Ordered 05-10-11 from webhallen.com in Sweden.

My system has been powered on 24/7 for quite a while and I noticed that one time when I shut down my system, it would take 2-3 attempts to start it up again. The next time it took perhaps ten times, the time after that perhaps a hundred tries, and then I was out of luck. This is exactly as some people have reported before me.

Unfortunately, since my PSU is just over one year old, it will not be covered by the resellers warranty, instead I have to sell my left arm to afford shipping across europe. I really hate these painstaking RMA routines as well. I'm trying to find out how I'm supposed to handle the issue with Antec right now and I've sent them an inquiry.

Damn I'm dissapointed right now. Sold my S12 430W and got a Phantom 350W instead. The cost was about the double, the decibel drop was hardly noticable and the PSU even died on me in the end, but it atleast had the cuortesy to wait just a week past the resellers warranty ended!

madman2003
Posts: 182
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Post by madman2003 » Wed Jan 31, 2007 1:58 pm

If i didn't mention already, my 350w is also gone. It failed to work for days, after which it did start to work again, but i didn't trust it. It was D05 model. Probably overheated (i thought it was ok).

~El~Jefe~
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Post by ~El~Jefe~ » Tue Mar 20, 2007 8:21 am

I have no idea still of my model. but... its working for over 14 months now. I turn the machine off about 6-8 times per year and leave it off for the night or when I go away for a few days.

It runs straight for about a month at times. It is happy and pushes a x1900 gaming rig with dual core amd, 2 gigs memory, 1 hd, 1 dvdburner and has a zalman Reserator 1 system on the cpu and vga.

cotdt
Posts: 295
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Post by cotdt » Sat Jun 09, 2007 2:15 pm

mine (Phantom 350) finally died after more than 2 years of continuous use. the 5V rail still works as my motherboard LED comes on, but it is unable to boot my computer. it's too bad, because when i replaced it with another power supply, there was hiss injected into my sound system. the Phantom was dead silent (now dead dead) and did not interfere with my sound system like all the other power supplies i'ved used. it was my all-time favorite, ideal power supply until it failed on me.

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