Get the power you need and the low electric bill you want with Antec’s EarthWatts 380D Green! One of the most powerful supplies on the planet,the EA-380D Green delivers 380 watts of reliable, continuous power while meeting the Bronze level of performance from 80 PLUS, the most widely recognized independent standard in power supply efficiency. Plus, the EA-380D Green boasts Universal Input and a quiet 80mm fan to keep everything cool. “Go green” with Antec’s EA-380D Green: an efficient, cost-effective power supply solution that lets you power your equipment, save money and protect the environment. To help protect the environment even more, this unit does not come with and AC cord, just re-use the one it is replacing!
$ 41.51
ANTEC…Believe it!.,
It’s Green…no literally this thing is finished in matte Green.
It doesn’t come with a power cord
It also is 80 plus Bronze certified and runs very, very quiet.
There is an 80mm fan but the thing barely spins up…I wasn’t sure if it was on or off a couple of times. The fan also pulls air from inside the case and exhausts it out the back. There is no rubber ring protecting the cables coming out the power supply from the power supply unit’s case…only a zip tie.
The thing works, and for US$45 I am hard pressed to find anything better.
Tomshardware did a Sub-$75 Mainstream Power Supply Roundup and I can clearly see why this came out on top.
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|Quiet and Fairly Efficient,
I was looking for a replacement for my generic PSU, since my system at times felt like it didn’t want to power up: it seemed it didn’t have enough power. I have a couple of other desktops that run off ANTEC PSUs, and I have had no problems with them over the years. After reading the reviews, I decided to purchase this one because it’s got good reviews and is 80 plus bronze. I thought I could save some energy as well. It worked right out of the box with no issues and as far as power consumption is concerned, here are the numbers from my Kill-a-Watt meter:
Old system on Idle: 66-68W
System with 380D on Idle: 57-60W
Old system running at full: 100-105W
System with 380D at full: 85-90W
I believe it would have saved more power if it had a max. output of, say, 300W instead of 380W, since at lower loads, it is not running as efficiently as it is at higher ones. I am not using this particular system for any kind of gaming and I don’t have a lot of cards or drives in my system; a 380W PSU is definitely an overkill. I wish they offered one with a smaller output.
My take on this is that if your system is running at more than 80W at idle and 120W at full and there are some issues with your generic PSU, then it would probably be justified to spend $45 for this. Otherwise, you are better off sticking to your existing PSU until its end of life. (I ran some numbers. The savings on my annual energy bill would just be about $5. It would take 9 years to recoup the cost.)
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|I love the power savings with this,
I’ve purchased several of these for my various PCs. On my wife’s PC (AMD Athlon X2 4000+), switching out her old power supply with this one brought her electricity utilization down from 60 to 42 watts. For both of my Intel Atom systems, one of which is the Linux file server for our house, neither system goes over 30 watts under heavy load. The file server has two mirrored 1.5 TB drives and uses 22 watts of power when idle whereas it used over 40 when I used an older power supply that I had laying around.
Admittedly, whether this power supply will pay for itself as an upgrade from an existing supply is debatable; however, if you’re building a new system, this power supply is actually cheaper than comparable non-BRONZE PSUs out there; and the power savings are definitely there. For new PCs that won’t need lots of power (like high-end gaming rigs do), you owe it to yourself to use this power supply instead of an off-the-shelf or non-BRONZE PSU.
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