Antec's TruePower Quattro 1000W
Everyone loves racing stripes

With an even kilowatt at is disposal, Antec's TruePower Quattro is the company's highest wattage PSU. The Quattro also has a higher output rating than any other PSU in this round-up, setting expectations high for Antec's latest. Surprisingly, though, the Quattro isn't the most expensive PSU of the lot. In fact, when you consider its $186 street price, one might even call the Quattro a bargain—on a dollar per watt basis, if nothing else.

Perhaps even more surprising than the Quattro's reasonable price tag are the unit's retro racing stripes, complete with its wattage rating passed off as a race number. It looks fantastic. Once installed in a system, however, the stripes are really only visible if you happen to duck your head inside the case. You might, if you had a thousand-watt power supply to gaze up at, but the novelty would probably wear off pretty quickly.

Antec keeps the retro theme going with the Quattro's cooling configuration, which relies on a single 80mm exhaust at the rear of the unit. Most modern PSUs have moved the fan to the bottom where there's room for 120mm and even 140mm units. Larger fans can move more air at slower speeds, generating less noise in the process, so it's disappointing to see Antec clinging to an older layout. We'll see whether the Quattro is actually louder than its competition in a moment.

Measuring 86mm tall, 150mm wide, and 180mm deep (3.4" x 5.9" x 7.1" for the metric-impaired), the Quattro is quite a bit deeper than most of the other PSUs we've gathered today. That makes installation with tight enclosures a little tricky, but given the Quattro's output wattage, I can't imagine many folks will be looking to squeeze it into smaller mid-towers.

Antec has done what it can to minimize the Quattro's footprint, employing a modular cabling system that allows users to remove unused leads to cut down on cable clutter. Modular cabling is relatively common among modern PSUs, so the Quattro hasn't broken any new ground here. However, all the cables are neatly sheathed, and there are plenty of options if you want to bias output toward four-pin molex connectors or SATA power plugs.

When hooked up to The Beast, the Quattro manages consistent voltages for each rail across all load levels. Note that 12V, er, voltage doesn't vary much at all between the primary power connector (12V1) and the PCIe connector (12V2). That's a good thing.

For the most part, the Quattro also maintains relatively little AC ripple content on each rail. There are a few exceptions, however. Ripple content is a little higher on all rails at our 25% load. The 12V PCI Express line also has higher ripple than the others throughout, although it's well within Antec's 120 millivolt ripple allowance for the 12V line.

Our efficiency calculations suggest that the Quattro is more efficient when under moderate loads than at either extreme. At 25% and 100% loads, efficiency actually falls below 80%. Interestingly, though, efficiency is actually lower with a 25% load then when the PSU is pushed to its limits.