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     The business end of the power supply is a LOT cleaner without the entire bundle of wires jutting out. Antec has made a logical decision in making the main 26-pin ATX connector, 4-pin 12-volt connector and power supply FAN RPM sensor wires fixed so they can not be removed. The main ATX power bundle also comes wrapped in a nylon mesh to keep the wires as tidy as possible. If you look closely at the picture above you will see a small 2-pin connector above the main wire bundle set coming out of the power supply. This is where you can connect a totally optional (but the connectors do ship with the unit) FAN ONLY set of 2x Molex connectors to the NeoPower. That leaves us with 4 connectors to populate with power wires for the rest of our computer.

     Antec has even provided a little headroom themselves by including some additional connectors that can be added anywhere on their like-connector power-wire bundle, shown above with a Molex connector.  There are two additional Molex, and two additional Serial ATA type connectors that will ship with the NeoPower. They are very simple to add, being a a punch-down style that requires no special tools to install. Simply fit the colored wires from the bundle into the respectively labeled slot on the connector and firmly press the fitted back over the whole assembly. Obviously, you would want to double check the arrangement to make sure that you have each of the wires where they should be because a mistake here can be very fatal to the hardware you attach the connector to. This is also a warning in the Users Manual of the NeoPower.

     Testing and Conclusions...........

     Building a system around this power supply is a pure joy! Though the large 24-pin to 20-pin adapter adds a bit of clutter in the motherboards ATX connector region, this type of arrangement will become more common as fewer power supplies will be packaged with the [old standard] 20-pin ATX power connector. Superb brilliance went into the though of the Molex power bundles, by providing one shorter than the other two. This makes connections to the larger 5¼ inch devices leave less unused wire, as they are typically on the top of the enclosure. For the following test-run the following wire-plan was used.

     Connector #1 - 20 inch 3x Molex: CD-R/W, DVD-ROM, DVD-R/W
     Connector #2 - 32 inch 3x Molex: Radeon 9800 Pro, Floppy drive (utilizing supplied splitter)
     Connector #3 - 32 inch 2x Serial ATA connectors: 2x Western Digital Raptor RAID-0 array
     Connector #4 - FAN ONLY: Front, Top, and Rear 80mm enclosure fans, daisy chained with fans own "Y" cords.

     The above plan leaves one main power connector completely open. Already the lack of spare connectors and needless power wires is greatly appreciated. Room in the enclosure that would have stowed all the extra Molex connectors and wire can now be used to stow the bulky ATX power bundle. So far, thumbs up!

     The over protection circuits of the Antec NeoPower gave me complete confidence when I pressed the power button. The single 120mm fan spins rather slow in the cooler moments of computer operation, but began spinning faster as things warmed up during high CPU utilization. However, it should be noted that power supply's single 120mm fan was still quiet!

     Asus Probe was set to monitor and report the voltage levels in 5 second increments. During a run of high CPU, Memory and secondary storage applications the voltage levels wavering are all WELL within tolerance. Keep in mind that this is with a Pentium-4 CPU with the Vcore set in the BIOS to 1.6 volts. This screen shot was taken with the system at idle. Pentium-4 systems have a tendency to track their voltage slightly higher than the BIOS set point with lower utilization rates. As expected, the system ran 100% stable at all times.

     Final thoughts on the Antec NeoPower are nothing but positive! Antec has clearly heard the voices of system builders everywhere asking for an end to cable clutter. Giving the user the ultimate decision on how much, or little to use, is a very monumental step in customer satisfaction. Keeping the unit quiet with a single 120mm fan is yet another response to public's request for quieter computing. Bundling all of this innovation together into one package does come at a hefty price. While most power supplies in the 480 Watt range will cost you around $75 US Dollars, the NeoPower 480 will slice into the wallet at around $120. Not outrageously priced by any means.