Vantec Stealth 520W

Back in black
The Vantec name rings familiar, but there's a lot more going on here than simply slapping an extra letter on one of Antec's power supplies. In fact, the Vantec Stealth 520W is the most unique power supply in this comparison. The Stealth 520W is targeted squarely at high-performance enthusiasts and overclockers with a sense of style, but that's perhaps the most fickle crowd Vantec could possibly target. Gobs of power without a huge noise penalty are hard enough to balance, but throwing aesthetics into the mix makes things that much more difficult.

Believe it or not, some people not only want, but demand personality, performance, and good looks. Greedy bastards. Can Vantec keep them satisfied with the Stealth 520W?

The first thing you'll notice about the Stealth 520W is its all-black aluminum casing. The conductive properties of aluminum could give the Stealth 520W an edge when it comes to cooling, and no one can deny that the black just looks cool. Well, cool for something you're going to bury inside your case and never see unless you have a case window. Thankfully, there's more to the Stealth 520W than a slick exterior; this baby's got substance, too.

Part of the Stealth 520W's substance lies in its fans—all three of them. The Stealth 520W is the only power supply in this comparison sporting three cooling fans, each of which measures 80mm in diameter. As part of its ode to aesthetics, the fan blades are translucent, and the grills nice and shiny. I was half expecting some really trick laser-cut custom fan grills on the Stealth 520W, at least for the rear exhaust fan.

With three fans spinning, the Stealth 520W should be able to keep itself cool and do a pretty effective job pulling rising hot air out of the top of your case. Three fans, however, aren't going to be silent, but Vantec has that base covered.

Vantec provides a fan speed switch right on the back of the PSU to let you control the speed of all three fans at once. Unlike some power supplies, which Vantec points out only let you throttle the speed of the rear exhaust fan, Vantec's switch affects all three of the power supply's fans, though you can't set the speed of each individually. Control over fan speeds can have a definite impact on overall noise levels, which will be especially useful for those living in cramped quarters who want to keep their systems crunching Folding@Home all night long and actually have the environment quiet enough to sleep in.

At the rear of the power supply, you'll also find the now-ubiquitous power supply on/off switch and a three-prong plug for peripheral devices. As someone with far too many power bars and surge suppressors filled to capacity, the extra plug is something I can really appreciate. No, you won't be able to plug in large, boxy power adapters because of the way the plug is oriented, but any normal-sized plug will fit and not get in the way.

Peripheral devices are moving towards pulling power directly from your PC via, for example, your USB ports, so the need to plug in a huge number of peripherals is diminishing, somewhat. However, it will likely be quite some time before monitors start pulling juice from system ports, so the Stealth 520W's extra plug will certainly come in handy there. Heck, with graphics cards like ATI's Radeon 9700 Pro requiring extra internal power connections, there's no telling what kinds of power and plug requirements we'll see from future products.

None of the other power supplies in this comparison feature the extra rear panel plug, and Vantec also provides a few extra connectors on the inside.

Vantec serves up 10 full MOLEX connectors on the Stealth 520W and throws in the standard two FDD power plugs for good measure. If you're using a power supply this stacked, I'd wager you're far more likely to be plugging a graphics card into one of those FDD power connectors than a dated floppy drive. Users with full tower cases rejoice; the Stealth 520W's longest MOLEX connector will reach a full 42", which should be enough to hit even hard drives buried on the bottom of massive cases.

With an eye towards broader compatibility with different motherboards, the Stealth 520W actually features a 24-pin rather than 20-pin motherboard connector. Vantec ships a 24-to-20 pin adapter in the box, which means that the Stealth 520W retains compatibility with virtually any available motherboard. However, Tyan's S2466, S2462 dual-Athlon server boards, and S2603 i860 boards are not compatible with the power connector, which is disappointing. I don't mind high-end server boards like the MPX and i860-based Thunder series being unsupported, since that class of motherboard definitely has special needs given integrated features like on-board SCSI, but it really hurts that Vantec doesn't officially support the Tiger MPX, which is a solid platform for SMP enthusiasts.

The 24-pin adapter is able to give the Stealth 520W's motherboard power cord a little extra reach, and you can plug in a motherboard a full 30 inches away from the PSU itself. To foil that kind of reach, motherboard manufacturers are going to have to really mess up power plug positioning.

Like Antec, Vantec wraps its motherboard power cord in a plastic sheath, this time zip-tied at each end. The zip ties aren't quite as slick as Antec's heat shrink wrapping, but they do the trick.