Antec sells decent high-end power supplies, but how about their more affordable models? Today we decided to review a 500 W from their Basiq series (BP500U) that costs only USD 60. Will it survive our tests?

This unit looks like it is manufactured by FSP, but we couldn’t confirm this.

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Figure 1: Antec Basiq BP500U power supply.

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Figure 2: Antec Basiq BP500U power supply.

Basiq BP500U is a small power supply (5 ½” or 14 cm deep), remembering “generic” power supplies because of its color and also because of the presence of an 80-mm fan on the rear, just like the very first power supplies. Differently from old and “generic” units Basiq BP500U has active PFC circuit.

Basiq BP500U does not use nylon sleeving on any of its cables, and the included cables are:

• Main motherboard cable with a 20/24-pin connector.
• Cable with two ATX12V connectors that together form one EPS12V connector.
• One cable with two six-pin auxiliary power connectors for video cards.
• One SATA power cable with three SATA power connectors.
• One peripheral power cable with two standard peripheral power plugs and one floppy disk drive power connector.
• One cable with two standard peripheral power plugs and one SATA power plug.

The number of cables is good enough for an entry-level or mainstream PC, but we think that Antec should have used a six/eight-pin connector on one of the video card auxiliary power connectors in order to allow you to install a very high-end video card that requires one eight-pin power connector and one six-pin power connector at the same time. Both video card connectors are available on the same cable, and we prefer when each connector uses its own cable. The reason is that when these connectors are attached to the same cable the voltage on the connectors tends to drop when the power supply is fully loaded.

All cables have 20” (51 cm) between the power supply housing and the first connector on the cable. On the peripheral power cables there is 5 7/8” (15 cm) between connectors. All wires are 18 AWG, which is the correct gauge to be used.

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Figure 3: Cables.

Let’s now take an in-depth look inside this power supply.