I think I deserve a badge of honor and respect for having read every single word of each post in this long sordid thread!

I have not participated in the poll as I am currently an owner but not a user of the Neo He 430.

I purchased an Antec P150 case on Dec 30, 2006, just two days ago, with Neo He 430 Ser. No. S05110063699. The case has Q.C. O.K stamp dated 2005-12-05.
Warranty seal was broken, as usual.

Little did I know at the time of purchase that the stock was over a year old!

I had read about the P150 and Neo He 430 woes months ago but thought that surely by now everything would have been worked out and a ‘new’ case/PSU would not have the old problems.

I am putting together my first system build and should have most of my components in by next week sometime. I am now scared s_itless to use this power supply with it.

It will be an extremely low-power system, modeled very closely to this Aopen system,
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article218-page6.html


Seeing as this PSU is from the Nov, 2005 batch (that is, pre- Rev. A3 or Rev. A4) there is a very good likelihood that it won’t work with my low-powered (P-M, no VGA card) system.

As MikeC says (Tue Oct 31, 2006) “Nov 2005 was not a good mfg date for Antec NeoHEs...â€

Are there any markings or indicators of any kind on the P150 packing cases indicating which revision case/power supply is inside?

Or are there any markings indicating the date the product was made?

There are two markings on my P150 packing case but I don't know who wrote them or what they indicate.

Well now I can take part in the user poll legitimately.

It's not working for me.
And you know what?
As disappointed as I am I'm not surprised.

I read every post in this thread and was quite prepared for this.

Still not sure what to do next though.

An Antec tech guy I spoke with a few days ago was emphatic in saying that later revisions of the NeoHE 430 were strictly for ASUS MB's and would have no effect on other MB's.

Mine is an AOpen MB.

You should rma your neohe for the latest rev before giving up. Email the editors at spcr and find out what rev and serial numbers have the lastest fix. Stay off the forums and try to resolve the problem through normal channels. You should not have to pay shipping for a replacement. Also, look at the neohe review here:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/other/ ... su5_5.html

Notice the difference between the interior photos of the original version reviewed at spcr and the rev 3 in the review. I believe the reviewer had some startup problems, but I don't remember what mainboard he was using.

Thanks Frank for your reply!
I stated earlier that I wouldn't be sucked into the NeoHE RMA game with Antec.

Read too many posts where users RMA'd several times and still couldn't get their rig to work.

I think the best solution for me will be to return the unit, take my losses and get something that works.

All,

am running the above combination since Saturday with no problems.

First power-on went without a hitch.

Intel ES6700, two Seagate SATAII and 256MB Graphic card.

Power supply serial number is S06090342571 - September 2006.

Warranty seal is NOT broken.

All voltages are within tolerance.

As I am researching on this machine (i,e, no games), I am not stressing or overclocking the box.


Your views??


JC

Good for you!

You have two important things going for you here.
Firstly your PSU is the latest revision.
Secondly your are providing it with enough power draw to keep it happy.

I can't claim either of the above.

NoiseFreeGuy:

Where did you buy it from? Did you buy it from Antec's web site or from a retailer.

I've been thinking about getting the P150 but I know the PSU is crap (or might be). On Antec's web site they have a B-stock section with discounted boxes because of cosmetic blemishes.

I'm assuming I'm going to have to buy an new PSU for this but It would be interesting to know if Antec is still shipping these out with the bad PSU or if it's just retailers with leftover stock.

I really wish that Antec, in light of all the problems, would make the P150 available with out a PSU.

I bought mine from a retailer, out of city though.



Antec is definitely shipping now with the revised A4 'good' PSU.
The problem is that there are still quite a few stores out there with really old stock. If you buy one from a store, have them open it up for you at the store so you can check the ser. no. on the PSU before you leave the store.



They have a unit that's called the 'Solo' I believe, that's very similar to the P-150 but minus the P.S.U.

Mine works fine, no probs at all - manufactured Sep 06.

Mobo Gigabyte GA-M57SLI-S4, 4200 X2 CPU, 7950GT, 2 * HD, 1 * optical disc.

I've checked out the Solo, but through Antec's B-stock site I can get the P150 with the PSU cheaper than the Solo with no PSU.

At least it sounds like Antec is trying to fix the problem.

I think I'll just get the P150 and check the PSU when I get it. If It's old or I have any problems with my ASUS mobo I can always just sell the Neo and get a new PSU.

The Reviews on this site say it is regretful that they are having so many problems because the Neo is one of the quietest drives they tested.

I'll let you know how it works out.

Thanks.

Greetings,

Well, this thread seems to drawn a bunch of first-time posters! Welcome to SPCR, y'all!

Just built my new (my first "quiet") PC inside Antec's P150. I bought the case from a local store (not so big) this week and I was quite disappointed when I found that the case had been manufactured in December 2005. Problems with the PSU ahead... and my motherboard is Asus too (P5L-VM 1394). Also, the fragile rubber O-rings were there.

The PSU serial started with 051201... so I figured it was made in December 2005 too (1st of Dec 2005?). At least not in November which was the bad month for Neo HEs.

But guess what, the PSU is working like a dream! No problems so far. And it is so quiet! The worst noise maker now is the stock fan of Scythe Ninja. It's even louder than the Tri-Cool at low setting. How can it be? I thought the Tri-Cool would be the weakest link and already ordered a Nexus.

Also, immediately when I noticed that the rubber O-rings are still there I wrote to Antec and asked if they could mail me the new fabric-reinforced ones. And they answered yes!

So, everything looking good. But I haven't voted yet, let's wait still for couple days... (the old pessimist)

edit: now voted "works ok"

Long time lurker, first time poster.

I found this thread doing a Google search but I've been browsing these forums for awhile as I want to build my next PC and make it as quiet as possible.

This thread piqued my interest as I just ordered a P150 case from Antec b-stock and I guess I'm glad I did! I didn't read every post in this thread but from the sounds of it, I should be OK? I'm installing an ASUS M2N-SLI Deluxe in this case and hope to use the included (fixed?) Neo PS.

I'll post back here after I receive it and get it powered up ... hopefully in a week or so!

THANKS!

This thread saved me.

I combined old & new components for this setup :

Asrock AM2NF3-VSTA mobo
AMD 64 x2 3800 EE dual core processor
2 x 1gb OCZ PC-6400 (special ops urban elite, great memory despite the name & camo)
ATI Radeon All-In-Wonder 9600 XT agp
PCI Firewire card with via chip
2 PATA drives, 1 SATA drive and 1 DVD-drive

..and the Antec NeoHE 500.

To test the basic functionality of my new system I only connected one PATA drive and the DVD drive. Sometimes the machine fired up, sometimes it gave me the half-second spin mentioned on this thread. Also, when it did boot up, it lost the ability to restart/reboot - it always shut down instead. Interestingly it never was able to boot with 1 HD and 1 DVD drive, but was sometimes able to boot with just 1 HD. Also, whenever it was unable to boot it stayed that way, regardless of the number of connected devices, until I cleared the CMOS.

After a lot of fiddling around and several dozens of cmos resets I came to realize that it actually is the PSU (not the mobo) giving me all this trouble. Found this thread, halleluja, connected all my ide devices to PSU outputs 1 & 3 & 5, connected all case leds & fans, switched jumpers on firewire card to make it draw power from the board instead of a floppy connector. Now I have a fully working system.

I'm glad that after all those half-second spins and irregular shutdowns my other components seem to have survived intact.

I would not recommend this PSU to anyone.

Congrats!


And neither would I !!!

Im selling mine, anyone interested? 40€.

I'm selling 2 of em, a 500 and a 430 - €50 and €40 respectively, anyone interested?

Im only selling it because it wasnät quiet enough, i need passive.

Antec had such up a reputation as a maker of high quality PSU units; I can't believe that this thread is still going. I expected that the most recent posts would be a year old all with the same message: "Antec fixed the problem and the new version of the PSU is flawless."

There was a thread recently in the PSU forum that gave the return/failure rates for most of the major manufacturers, Antec's was the highest.

I got my P150 yesterday and already I'm having problems.

They don't seem to be the same problems as everyone else is reporting (power shutting down...).

I have:

Intel C2D E6600 CPU

Asus P5N E-SLI Mobo

BFG 7600GT vid

western digital 320gig SATA HD

Samsung DVD player/burner.

The PSU NeoHE 430W has an 'A04' next to the serial number. (is that supposed to be one of the new/good ones?)

Here are the problems I've been having:

When I tried to install windows XP it would hang/lock up while copying files for the installation. It did this about 4 or 5 times, hanging at a different place each time. When it did this I would reboot and start the installation again. It would ask me if I wanted to install on the drive as is or re-format. I picked the quick reformat and that finally worked.

Once I got to this point I got through the windows install with out a problem. I started to install anti-virus, fire wall, ...

Every once in a while it would just lock up, keyboard and mouse, and I would have to hold the power button in to shut down and re-start.

I installed more programs and would have to reboot after installing. When I did it would hang during the re-boot. It would hang for 30sec or more on the Welcome screen and then I would see the desktop, but with no icons or task bar. This would hang for 60sec or more but eventually it would boot up.

towards the end of the night It would reboot with out hanging but every once in a while it would lock up again and I'd have to reboot.

This morning while getting ready for work I turned it on and walked away. When I came back a few min. later I was hung on a black screen with a Cursor in the middle.


Do these problems seem to you like they have anything to do with the NeoHE?

I only have two of the modular connectors plugged into it. One for the Sata power and one for the DVD power (with the rear fan on the same power)

I have them as far apart as possible. One at one end and the other at the other end.

I should state that at no time did I have any incident where the PSU shut down.

What do you think?

It's possible, but unlikely that your problems are due to the NeoHE, but you need to do some more diagnosis to know for sure. Make sure the heatsink for your processor is properly seatest, use Memtest86 to test the memory, etc. If that doesn't reveal the problem, you should probably try swapping out components for known good components if possible. I'd suspect the Motherboard, then the RAM, then the disk drive.

When I went home last night I tried to start the pc up and it froze on the 'welcome' screen. I hit the reset button and it powered up.

I shut it down again and opened the case up to make sure all the connections were correct. I found one problem. The connector for the front panel 'fire wire' was not connected properly. (I think it's odd that they would make a connector that can be plugged in wrong. ) It's one of those connectors with 4 pins on one row and 3 pins on the row below it with the 4th blocked off so you can't put it in backwards. I had it oriented correctly but the socket to plug it into is bigger than the plug and I accidentally plugged it on one pin to the left. ( leaving two pins out).

I tried to find a Western Digital app to test the HD but all I found was something to partition...

I loaded some more apps and everything seemed find. I loaded a game (FEAR) and played through a couple of levels of the game (an hour or more) with no problems at all.

I analyzed, encoded, and burned a DVD with DVD Shrink (with it set to deep analysis so it does it in two passes). It did this in 45min. (this would have taken 2hrs on my old PIII machine)

I downloaded something called Hot CPU Tester which does a burn-in and tests the memory, hard drive, MMX. (the pro version tests more)

The test ran for 6hrs with both processors running at about 100% for the entire time. This ran all night with out a hiccup.

This morning I checked it and every thing was fine, I closed the program and closed the task manager that I had open to watch the cpu's. I took a shower and by the time I looked at it again it was locked up, completely frozen.

Any ideas about this. It seems to freeze when there is little or no load on it but run fine with a load. It was up and running with no problems from 6pm to 8am.

The voltage seems to look normal (I have Asus probe running to see the voltage and temp and fan speed)

I'm getting:
Vcore = 1.2
3.3 = 3.25
5 = 4.9x
12 = 11.9x

And the CPU temps never got above 43ºC

I forgot to write down the serial number but it does have the A4 with a blue dot under it.

Also, I couldn't see if the warranty sticker is broken, but I can tell you that it is not in the same place as I've seen peoples pics on here. It is located on the back of the psu on the bottom left. I'd have to take it out of the case to see, and I haven't done that yet.

[P.S. I don't have any parts I can swap out to test this, except that I do have an Antec 350w Smartpower 2.0 PSU in my old pc that I could try. ]

Should i do an RMA? (neo430 is august 06). Anybody at SPCR know if there has been a fix. Devonavar?

thanks.

There have been no new updates (that I know of) since Aug '06, so I'm not sure that an RMA would help you. I take it you're talking about the unit that caused your clock to reset (weird symptom that — clock should only be affected by the battery on the motherboard).

OK, probably my last post in this thread. I swapped out the PSU for an Antec 350W smartpower.

At first it seemed like it fixed the problem. I was able to shut down and restart several time with out any problems.

I tried playing a game and it locked up. I turned some of the graphics down and tried again and got a little farther and it locked up. I turned them (the graphics settings in the game) down a little more and was able to play for 30-40min before it locked up again.

I tried watching a DVD and got about 20 min into it and it locked up.

I thought the 350w PSU might not be enough power, but with only one SATA drive, one optical drive, two sticks of mem, and one PCI-E graphics card, (according to an online power calc) I should only need about 130w power to run this system. So I don't think the lower power PSU is the problem.

I ran Memtest for 45min and there were no errors.

I found a Western Digital Diagnostic for the HD and that found no problems.

This morning I booted up and it froze on the black screen before the welcome screen.

So I don't think the NeoHE is the problem. Or the Mem, or the HD.

That leaves me with the MOBO or the video card. (maybe the optical drive but I don't think that is it)

I'm going to see if the vid card in my old computer will go in my new one. If not I'll see if anyone I know has an extra card I could test with.

If I can't do that I may just tell BFG that I got a bad card and get them to send me a new one.

I wish there were some kind of app that could test the MOBO.


P.S. when I took the NeoHE out I got a look at the warranty sticker (I mentioned that on mine it is in the lower left of the back of the PSU) It was not broken, but it was starting to break. There is a hairline tare in it about half way across. It seems they just use cheap material to make the sticker. My Smartpower 350 has a white label that seems to be made of a plastic like (bumper sticker) type of material. It has not ripped and shows no sign of taring.

yes it was the psu. thought i would post the info. its ok now with the seasonic. thanks again.

I owned a neo he 480. I ran it for about a year on a dfi ultra-d, a single vga 256mb pci-e, optical dvdr, and 3 hdd's. After a while it would have a huge 30second lag between the time i pushed the power button and the computer showing any life whatsoever. Sometimes i swear it wouldn't turn on unless I pushed the power button a certain amount of times. Needless to say it was retarded, i examined the internal parts through the grill with a flashlight. I saw the capacitors were leaking. I RMA'd it and recieved the neo he 500 which blew up in under 24 hours of its installation into a brand new intel rig running an asus p5w dh deluxe motherboard.
lol antec should make gift baskets with sausages and crackers and shit like that instead of all this difficult electronic stuff.

unit: Antec NEOPOWER 480 ATX12V v2.0 480W Power Supply - Retail
place of purchase: newegg.com
date of purchase: 7/7/2005 8:33:00 PM
serial#: lost during rma, back of manual says "printed in china
version 1.0.5 05/05/04"

Well, I've been running my Neo HE430 for just over a week now and all is well. It powered on the first time and is running cool & quiet so far. The S/N is: S06040262055. I don't know if this is a newer one or not but I'm assuming it is since it came straight from Antec (the case had a couple of imperfections in it which is probably why it was b-stock -- it came in the original box).

So I'm happy thus far.