Antec NEO HE Issues

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Are there any known compatibility problems with the Neo and my setup?

I don' t know if anyone can actually answer that for you. I have an Epox and it wouldn't work with mine. I think I've seen a few guys with DFI boards who also had issues. So, it's kinda up in the air unless you get one of the newer versions, if they even work.
 
metallicafan said:
You didnt even try it out before sending it off? I hope you refunded the buyer his money? Remember how frusterated you are over this deal, its not very nice to just give your problems to someone else.

Bloody cheek! If I'd have opened it, it wouldn't have been as attractive to buy, so why should I lose any more money? They sent me a (supposedly) unit with the fix, now how the bloody hell am I supposed to know that it was going to be DOA? I spoke with the buyer explaining why I didn't want it, (the A8N issues, which he was already aware of,) and then helped him every step of the way through him RMAing it.

Days after the sale, and the communications, he left me the following feedback;


Happy eBayer bloke said:
Fantastic ebayer. Fast delivery + great communication. Highly recommended.

I wasn't giving my problems to someone else, if it was supposed to be working, was I?

But anyway, thanks for drawing the conclusion about me based on fact, and not jumping in blind and being an arsehole about it.
 
mtx said:
OK, Im about to buy a NeoHE 500W
I'm about to buy a leather glove so I can slap you with it.

Seriously though, if you absolutely must have an antec, definitely stay away from the HE series. Otherwise get an Enermax Liberty or OCZ Powerstream. As you can see by this huge thread, they are having major issues with this line of power supply, and it doesn't just affect asus boards... it affected me and my Abit setup.

The problem is, you power it on once, and by the time you realize the power supply is garbage you've already done irreparable damage to other components. At this point I've initiated contact with the Better Business Beaureu as Antec has not replied to any of my several emails, and I'm sitting here looking at a fried 9800pro, BenQ DVD burner and a motherboard that completely flaking out.... and bills for all the replacements I bought.

The moral of the story is, if you buy one of these now and have a problem, nobody here will have any sympathy for you. And if anything breaks during this process, it seems pretty clear that Antec won't shed any sympathy or responsibility either.

If Antec would have at least made efforts to make amends, I would have some faith in them as a company. At this point I'm so sour on how they engineered a complete disaster, haven't acknowledged my problems and still seem to have NFI what's wrong with the power supplies in the first place, I couldn't do anything but tell you to just stay away. This is all coming from a very long term user of their power supplies.... Just stay away.
 
Smash said:
Bloody cheek! If I'd have opened it, it wouldn't have been as attractive to buy, so why should I lose any more money? They sent me a (supposedly) unit with the fix, now how the bloody hell am I supposed to know that it was going to be DOA? I spoke with the buyer explaining why I didn't want it, (the A8N issues, which he was already aware of,) and then helped him every step of the way through him RMAing it.

Days after the sale, and the communications, he left me the following feedback;




I wasn't giving my problems to someone else, if it was supposed to be working, was I?

But anyway, thanks for drawing the conclusion about me based on fact, and not jumping in blind and being an arsehole about it.

My appologies. You are indeed better than most ebay sellers. Sounds like you handled the situation with great class. It was not acceptable of me to generalize you in with many dishonest ebay sellers, however you must admit that there are many ebay sellers who would not have been so quick to help him when he had a problem and the seller already had his money. Hopefully he soon has a working NeoHE unit that will serve him well.
 
I'm about to buy a leather glove so I can slap you with it.

If you go to newegg.com and look at the reviews for the NeoHe550W they are very good except for those people with ASUS boards. Nearly every reviewer in the first couple pages had nothing but good things to say about the PSU unless they had an ASUS board. The PSU is working great for many of us. There were even a couple good reviews from people with ASUS boards who had no problems at all.
 
not that I completely disagree with you, because I have based some decisions (albeit rather small ones) based solely on egg reviews.... but you have to take those with a grain of salt because one has no clue who actually wrote them.

Who's to say that newegg has some sort of vested interest in selling an iffy product, and posts great reviews to push sales? Or better still - employees of the manufacturer tainting the reviews in their favor, without Newegg's knowledge. I"m sure it goes the other way too - some manufacturers may bash competitors in the reviews in hopes of scaring potential buyers away.... I mean, Newegg is arguably the most used and trusted online retailer of pc parts.... they know that people will read it.

It's not to say that the reviews are worthless, but I seldom ever base a decision solely on what people are saying there. I also have problems trusting sites' reviews of products (excluding the OCP of course), because most of them WANT to give products good reviews so they can keep getting free stuff... which is an entirely different story (and was actually touched upon on several occassions by the OCP staff). Forums of this site as well as most other respected sites, amdmb, anand, etc are the only way in my opinion to get a clear picture on what the average joe's experience with a particular product is, period.

For example, next time you are looking to buy something and go to google for a review search, replace the word "review" with "forum", and chances are your first hits will be the real reviews - actual experiences.

Like I said I'm not trying to bash your comment because like I've said, I have made some decisions based on egg reviews, and generally speaking, user reviews are pretty on-point. My point is, just because anonymous people gave the thumbs-up in a particular product review on that site doesn't neccesarily mean that product is to be trusted, or in this case, works as intended. What I've read on these power supplies on this and other forums paints a clear enough picture to know what's really going on.

I've definitely learned a valuable lesson from this experience though. Even though I remember seeing something about these power supplies some time before I stopped at Best Buy (probably this very thread), I thought I wouldn't be affected because I wasn't using an Asus board... and I've trusted Antec for so long I figured 'why not'. Now I know why not. In the future, if I absolutely must buy something in a store with importance of this magnitude to my pc... I'll take a trip to see what they have, and after searching, take another trip to buy if it's worth it. In the end, it's not the company's responsibility to ensure top notch quality control - it's our responsibility to trust no-one.
 
metallicafan said:
My appologies. You are indeed better than most ebay sellers. Sounds like you handled the situation with great class. It was not acceptable of me to generalize you in with many dishonest ebay sellers, however you must admit that there are many ebay sellers who would not have been so quick to help him when he had a problem and the seller already had his money. Hopefully he soon has a working NeoHE unit that will serve him well.
metallicafan, no problem, thanks for the apology, accepted. :)

And yes, by all acounts, he is now sorted.
 
Well, I got in my new RMA'd Antec power supply and a replacement motherboard an everything appears happy now. Can't wait to finish installing everything and start to really beat on this machine.
 
I did some hardware knackering, the reason the ASUS board has so much trouble with the HE's is something to do with the way it measures the voltage levels; it makes the HE think there's a short and all Antec PSU's have short protection which causes a shut-off. Seems to be why the HE's also don't work with certain brands of power supply testers and also why TruePower's don't work with RAIDMAX brand power supply testers.
 
MY NEOHE WOES ARE OVER!

Just thought id let you guys know how my replacement went.

NO crashes at all, ever, since i been using my 'A3' revision NeoHE that i had been testing on the bench at work for 2days. I have since been using it at home and both XP 32bit and 64bit are rock solid.

An interesting side note is that the voltages reported by SpeedFan, although not the same as my multimeter, are a LOT smoother. So something appears to be different in that respect.

The NeoHE's we have been selling at work since the 'A3' revision made it to our shelves appear to be rock solid also. He havent had any back yet. They have been sold with all sorts of motherboards including ASUS and DFI and i have no problems to speak of.

Of course if this changes, ill be the first to tell you! :D

Cheers
 
_Korruption_ said:
Is this listed on the label itself anywhere?

Sorry folks, its printed to the left of the actual barcode on the barcode sticker on the PSU itself. The only way you can find out is by looking inside the box. But that said all the stock now shipping SHOULD be 'A3' unless some places havent turned over their old stock. (which we have done already, a few times fortunately :D )

hope that helps.
 
h4rb1ng3r said:
The NeoHE's we have been selling at work since the 'A3' revision made it to our shelves appear to be rock solid also. He havent had any back yet. They have been sold with all sorts of motherboards including ASUS and DFI and i have no problems to speak of.

Of course if this changes, ill be the first to tell you! :D

Cheers

Where do you work? (so that I make sure to buy an A3 revision)
 
i'm kinda too lazy to read through all the posts, but does this only affect the one Asus board A8N SLI?

Any other boards to be suspicious of?
 
I got the Antec P150 case with the NeoHE 430 - running a DFI NF4 Ultra-D w/ MSI 7800GT 256MB and Opteron 165 @ 2.5Ghz.

So far no problems running my system 100% load with Prime95 on both cores and 3dMark running in a loop.

However, when ever 3D comes on the power supply makes a small buzzing sound or whining. In between 3D scenes in 3D Mark the buzz goes away and then returns when 3D starts up again.

ANyone else have this issue? Any comments about it?
 
h4rb1ng3r said:
Sorry folks, its printed to the left of the actual barcode on the barcode sticker on the PSU itself. The only way you can find out is by looking inside the box. But that said all the stock now shipping SHOULD be 'A3' unless some places havent turned over their old stock.

The replacement for the PSP I RMAed is S05110077XXX. No A3 on the barcode but it is working fine on my asus a8n-sli. ASUS pc probe complained about the 5v level when I had the pcie plugged into the far right opening #5 (away from the 12V lines) but it is much more stable when plugged into opening #2.

I think what things you plug in where may effect how this thing works. Any one else notice differences when swapping plugs around?
 
There hasn't been much activity on this issue for a while now and I was wondering if the replacement units have actually fixed whatever the problem is? Was there ever an asnwer as to what exactly the problem is with the Neos?

Can it damage any of the components?

For those of you who will want to jump on anyone for asking a question, Yes, I did use the search first and yes, I did read through all the other pages relating to this issue.
 
prdfy said:
There hasn't been much activity on this issue for a while now and I was wondering if the replacement units have actually fixed whatever the problem is? Was there ever an asnwer as to what exactly the problem is with the Neos?

Can it damage any of the components?

For those of you who will want to jump on anyone for asking a question, Yes, I did use the search first and yes, I did read through all the other pages relating to this issue.

yeah no one ever gave an answer when i asked the pointed question of suppliers, "what exactly is wrong with the NEOHE's that people are having trouble with?" Mostly coz they were being treated like mushrooms also. (kept in the dark and fed shit, just like us :p )

But I do remember hearing somewhere it had to do with overly sensitive protection circuitry in the PSU combined with ASUS motherboards on-board power diagnostics or something.

To answer the question about if the NEOHE's go bad and die, will it take out any of your PC parts? No it shouldnt, thats one of its features.
 
h4rb1ng3r said:
Sorry folks, its printed to the left of the actual barcode on the barcode sticker on the PSU itself. The only way you can find out is by looking inside the box. But that said all the stock now shipping SHOULD be 'A3' unless some places havent turned over their old stock. (which we have done already, a few times fortunately :D )

hope that helps.
Can you provide a picture? I just got a new Neo HE 550 in the mail today, and I cannot find any 'A3' anywhere on the PSU...

My date code is: S0511005xxxx

It also appears that my "warrany void if removed" sticker is cracked as though someone has already been inside the supply.... I don't understand that, however. The box was in the factory plastic wrap with no signs of tampering and was purchased as a new item.
 
phive0 said:
Can you provide a picture? I just got a new Neo HE 550 in the mail today, and I cannot find any 'A3' anywhere on the PSU...

My date code is: S0511005xxxx

It also appears that my "warrany void if removed" sticker is cracked as though someone has already been inside the supply.... I don't understand that, however. The box was in the factory plastic wrap with no signs of tampering and was purchased as a new item.

here's piccy for you.
barcode.jpg


as for the warranty sticker, there are similar stories to yours over at Silent PC Review forums.
i dont think its any cause tfor concern. my guess is they may have tried to repair a bunch of PSU's but didnt fix the warranty sticker.

From the information i have the 'A3' revisions have been manufactured with the 'fix', or at the very least, dont exhibit the same behaviour as previous shipments. Which may be why mine doesnt have a broken warranty sticker like other people have reported with 'working' non-'A3' PSU's.
 
h4rb1ng3r said:
here's piccy for you.

...

as for the warranty sticker, there are similar stories to yours over at Silent PC Review forums.
i dont think its any cause tfor concern. my guess is they may have tried to repair a bunch of PSU's but didnt fix the warranty sticker.

From the information i have the 'A3' revisions have been manufactured with the 'fix', or at the very least, dont exhibit the same behaviour as previous shipments. Which may be why mine doesnt have a broken warranty sticker like other people have reported with 'working' non-'A3' PSU's.
Thanks!

The Neo HE seems to run a lot cooler than my last power supply, an Antec TruePower 2.0 550W. The cabling is a lot neater and it is virtually silent. The +3.3 and +5.0 volt rails are a little lower than the older TP 2.0, but still pretty tight.

I assume the "0511" part of the Antec bardcode sticker refers to the year and month of manufacture. Perhaps all of the ones from 0512 and onward have the 'A3' on the barcode?
 
phive0 said:
I assume the "0511" part of the Antec bardcode sticker refers to the year and month of manufacture. Perhaps all of the ones from 0512 and onward have the 'A3' on the barcode?

yep. :p
 
Well...I wanted to upgrade my old rig piece by piece and the chieftec 360W being the limiting factor I decided to buy myself a lovely quiet stable Antec NeoHe 550.

I had a look at the specs and some extremely positive reviews. The post about Asus was on antec's site but i ignored it and didn't look any further....FATAL MISTAKE

I get exactly the same symptoms as most of you on this thread, that is cpu fan turning but mobo (MSI kt4v) is not powered.
Reverting to the Chieftec and everything's groovy as usual...

Interesting fact: the more HD/CD/DVD I connect to the PSU the shorter it lasts...with 2xHD and 2xDVD I get worst result with 5 secs. So it's something to do with one of the marvelous protection features listed in the specs...

To me a PSU that claims to be compatible with a 20/24pin and can't power my modest rig is no good.

Config:
Athlon XP3000 Barton
MSI KT4V-L
MSI FX5200

I was obviously planning to upgrade the mobo at some point...but not so soon. Thanks Antec!
 
which chipset does that board have? Its not recommended for older motherboards like the nForce, nForce2. It was dicussed earlier in this thread I believe.
 
It's a KT400 chipset. Pretty old.

After researching a little more (I wish I did that before I ordered the PSU...), I found some threads about the neohe and the fact that it does not have a -5V rail (they dropped it since the ATX 2.01 spec apparently).

Links to the thread: http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/55019/

There's a also a discussion about the definition of "backwards compatibility"...

I could not find a copy of a pre-2.01 ATX PSU spec, but it looks like -5V is only used for legacy stuff like serial and maybe parallel. Since I do not use these I will try to disable them from my BIOS setup and spark the rig again with the NeoHe. My old Chieftec can only spit 0.3A max on this rail...do you think it's worth trying to do without a -5V or is it a waste of time?

Further on the thread I found mentions on the Antec dropping on the 12V rail inthe case of INSUFFICIENT power consumption (like, under 1A per rail). Now that's the first time I hear of this but it sounds plausible to me considering the symptoms and my experiments with the wiring.
This goes against my principle of precaution that says "don't plug all the components at the same time on the first attempt" but hey.
I will try and put all my HD/DVD on the same rail and see if it helps.
 
valrog said:
It's a KT400 chipset. Pretty old.

After researching a little more (I wish I did that before I ordered the PSU...), I found some threads about the neohe and the fact that it does not have a -5V rail (they dropped it since the ATX 2.01 spec apparently).

Links to the thread: http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/55019/

There's a also a discussion about the definition of "backwards compatibility"...

I could not find a copy of a pre-2.01 ATX PSU spec, but it looks like -5V is only used for legacy stuff like serial and maybe parallel. Since I do not use these I will try to disable them from my BIOS setup and spark the rig again with the NeoHe. My old Chieftec can only spit 0.3A max on this rail...do you think it's worth trying to do without a -5V or is it a waste of time?

Further on the thread I found mentions on the Antec dropping on the 12V rail inthe case of INSUFFICIENT power consumption (like, under 1A per rail). Now that's the first time I hear of this but it sounds plausible to me considering the symptoms and my experiments with the wiring.
This goes against my principle of precaution that says "don't plug all the components at the same time on the first attempt" but hey.
I will try and put all my HD/DVD on the same rail and see if it helps.

The problem is most likely crossloading. You improperly matched the PSU to the application. ATX12v2.0 PSU's when used on a system tha powers the CPU off of the 5v rail can experience large voltage fluctuations and system instability. It is that way with any ATX12v2.0 PSU that is used on a 5v system. Some people experience it some don't.
 
Spectre said:
The problem is most likely crossloading. You improperly matched the PSU to the application. ATX12v2.0 PSU's when used on a system tha powers the CPU off of the 5v rail can experience large voltage fluctuations and system instability. It is that way with any ATX12v2.0 PSU that is used on a 5v system. Some people experience it some don't.

Well it seems I have to find myself another PSU, ATX12v1.xx this time, and check this excellent forum carefully beforehand (suggestions, anyone?).

More importantly I now have a good excuse to build myself a brand new rig around this PSU, since my supplier will charge me 10% if I want to claim a refund for incompatibility...
I don't believe there is any point replacing it since it's A3 already.
I will just try it on a more recent rig to be sure. Oh, and check that the fan blows the right way, too :D

Although it sounds weird to start with the PSU, in this case I don't think it will be a limiting factor with 550W, PCIE and dual-proc support...

Only little thing, if I understood this thread well: even with an A3 I should avoid Asus ...:p
Could anyone recommend a 100% NeoHe compatible socket 939 motherboard?
 
valrog said:
Could anyone recommend a 100% NeoHe compatible socket 939 motherboard?

There is no such thing as 100% compatitble with any PSU, but I have a MSI K8N-Neo4. It has worked great for me and has all the features I need. Works fine with my "non-A3" Antec 500HE. My only complaint: no firewire, but I can live without it. Not that big of a deal.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813130491

For futher suggestions on a new rig you might want to make a new thread. :)
 
Since this issue seems to have faded with the A3 PSU I am going to let this drop.

If this needs to be revisited we will restick this.
 
Only little thing, if I understood this thread well: even with an A3 I should avoid Asus ...
Could anyone recommend a 100% NeoHe compatible socket 939 motherboard?

Both the Abit K8N and K8N-SLI work great with my 430 watt NeoHE.
 
No idea what version my board is but my A8N5X and Neo work happily together, very cool and stable.
 
This summary’s objective is to clear up any confusion pertaining to Antec’s NeoHE power supply series compatibility issues that have come up, as well as some other points.
Customer satisfaction is an extremely high priority for us, and we are fully prepared to help our customers in any way that we can. Our customer support technicians are standing by, and are happy to help anyone who may be experiencing difficulties with an Antec PSU. The NeoHE comes with a full three year warranty and in the event that a customer is faced with a non working product within these three years, we will be happy to replace it.


Asus motherboard issue
Initially Antec and Asus received reports of issues between NeoHE and two Asus motherboard families including the A8N motherboards. After testing done at both Antec and Asus’s facilities both companies were able to reproduce the problem. Asus let us know that they believed customers may have to upgrade their motherboard to version 1.02 (through Asus) and also to make sure they used the latest BIOS to solve the problem. Further testing by both companies seemed to confirm this.

However once this fix became known to the public both companies received reports from end users that even with version 1.02 motherboards and the latest BIOS they were still experiencing random shutdowns. Once again testing was done at both companies, and from that testing it was concluded:
Old BIOS original NeoHE incompatible for 80% of users
BIOS 1009+1.02 mb original NeoHE incompatible for 20% of users
BIOS 1009+1.02 mb modified NeoHe no problem

At this time (end of November 2005) we air shipped modified NeoHe’s to both our Fremont and Rotterdam offices to be made available to customers who fell into that 20%. In addition, all NeoHE’s that were being shipped out in December included this fix. NeoHE’s with this fix include A3 or higher in the serial number bar code area.

NeoHE_upc.jpg

NeoHE Warranty Sticker
As has been noted original NeoHE’s warranty sticker suffered from two problems. Notably the material used was too weak to survive shipping and would often tear. Secondly the position of the warranty sticker was not as specified by Antec for our power supplies. Recent shipments of NeoHE’s have rectified these issues.

A broken warranty sticker does not necessarily invalidate the warranty: as long as the power supply exhibits no other evidence of tampering, as long as the sticker is the first production one in the original location, and as long as the special circumstances warranty procedure (described below) is followed, Antec will honor the warranty for affected Neo HE power supplies.

Customers who encounter this issue must take the following steps:
1. Contact Antec Customer Support by email at [email protected] or [email protected] to report this issue, the sooner the better. Include the model and unit serial number in the report.
2. Antec Customer Support will respond with an email listing that specific power supply by serial number and confirming that, barring other external or internal signs of tampering, Antec will honor the warranty for that reported unit.
3. It is the responsibility of the customer to keep the email from Antec Customer Support. Should an RMA ever be required, the customer will need to produce said email along with other warranty paperwork such as the purchase receipt, RMA form, etc. This is an additional special circumstances requirement for these cases, and no exceptions will be made.
 
I got a 550 from BB, it cost too much there, but if it's not the newer version I want to be able to return easily. I hope it's an 'A3' as you guys say.

Anyone know if BB has stocked the newer versions? I would hope so by now.

Also, are there any differences on the boxes. Do all of them say 'Dual Graphics', or something like that.
 
ok, i really want this PSU, and i have a A8N SLI board, so if i have the newist BIOS, and the newist PSU, im going to be OK?.. if not that new enermax is looking nice, and frankly ive bought 9 antec PSUs in my life and nothing eles, i really dont want to switch companies... can someone confirm that this formula i have is right

new Antec PSU (A3) + A8N newist BIOS = happy computer ??

thanks
 
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