About That Phantom Replacement...

Yes, the replacement they sent. The NeoPower 650 Blue.

Quality PSU, you say? I beg to differ.

Out of the box, the PSU fan made clicking noises. Day by day, it got louder and louder, until today, less than two months since it was installed, the clicking has become so loud, that it annoys the hell out of me even though there are 14 (yes, fourteen) other fans running next to it. Guess I will have to rip the fan out of the PSU and replace it with something more, ahem, quality.

But you might say - wait a second, you said you installed Corsair instead of that Phantom? That's right, I did.

This PSU, however, had to be installed a few days after it arrived to replace another Antec PSU that died right then - SmartPower 350.

Having read Scott's comments, I thought long and hard about whether I am being unfair. Well, I don't think so. Here's the list of all hardware that failed for me since 1997:

• One no-name PSU that came with YY-0110 (catastrophic failure);
• A couple of Maxtor 80G drives (catastrophic failure);
• One or maybe two Netgear Gigabit Ethernet cards (works no higher than 100M now);
• One eVGA videocard (GeForce 7800 GT) half-dead - apparently, bad soldering on memory chips, overheats easily but still usable;
• All Antec PSUs.

No, I don't think I am unfair.

UPDATE (2009/08/08): Now it's also screeching.

UPDATE (2009/08/10): Now it seized completely. Good thing I have an array of other "quality" PSUs to rip the replacement fan out of.

Antec Warranty: You've got to be kidding me

Remember, I was furious about dead Antec Phantom 500?

Finally, they did send up a replacement. They notified me about that a day after I, completely pissed, decided to bite the bullet and bought the replacement, Corsair CMPSU-750TX.

Another two weeks passed by, and finally the replacement from Antec came (by the way, I was never notified of a tracking number). The computer where Phantom died was operational again, so I was not in a hurry to open the box, and it was just laying in the corner.

Today, I've decided to clean up the shop and opened the box. And you won't believe what I've found inside.

Antec NeoPower 650 Blue.

I' missing something here. I've sent you a FANLESS PSU. You send me back one WITH A FAN. Could've had some common decency and told me upfront that you don't manufacture Phantoms any more, and can't send it back. I would've understood, or maybe would've asked for some sort of redemption - all in all, I've decided not to buy Antec PSUs any more. But no, you had to sneak up on me and make me exert extra efforts to call your RMA department (See Figure 1, also here) and figure out whether it was a mistake and Antec does have some spare Phantoms and they will fix it (provided I pay for shipping, both ways, of course), or I've just been had and now I'm stuck with this Blue <censored>.

I think I'm done with Antec for real this time. Not just the PSUs, everything.

UPDATE (2009/08/03): fail. Less than two months.