Antec Pantom 350 Power Supply continued...

The back of the Phantom 350w PSU is very impressive. From this angle you can seen how the enclosure is composed of thick aluminum panels which are fitted together, like a aluminum puzzle. The fins on the top and bottom of the PSU should provide lots of cooling power though the limited amount of airflow at the top of your case will hamper the efficient of this cooling method. The fully-vented front and back of the PSU should allow enough air to leave the PSU to keep this model as cool as possible.

The venting on the sides of the power supply is limited, but given Antec's reputation I am pretty sure that this has been done for strategic reasons, like that almost no airflow will come from the sides of the PSU or that this is done to limit dust accumulation. The sticker on the side tells customers not to take this PSU apart. Although it did not scare us, this PSU was much harder to take apart than a standard fan-cooled PSU and we did not want to take any chances before the test.

This supply's wiring is done very nicely- only the main 24-pin connection is fully sleeved, the others are simply kept together with pre-installed zip-ties every few inches. The main connector is a 24-pin, to convert to 20-pin you need to plug in the included converter, which adds about five inches to the length of the main cord. With more people switching over to PCIe, it great that this board took that into consideration and gives you the 24-pin, without having to add any length to the PSU. If you are using an older board you can simply use the converter and the 20-pin connection. Of course, this PSU is ATX12V 2.01 compliant.

Here is a close-up of the PCIe power connector. This is a nice feature and it shows us how Antec is changing with the times and that this PSU is designed to handle the requirements of new systems, though its power level is a bit low to be running a power-hungary card, like a nVidia 6800.