Thermaltake Toughpower 1000 watt modular power supply

The good folks at Thermaltake were nice enough to send over a 1000 watt Toughpower psu for us to fondle.

So what's the deal with this Thermaltake power supply? First off, it's one of the rare modular high-wattage units available. Other features include quad +12v rails, active PFC, a 140mm fan for cooling, quad-SLI certified, and comes equipped with the new 8-pin PCI-e connectors for tomorrow's graphics cards. Compliance with ATX V2.2 and EPS V2.91, as well as claims of up to 87% efficiency and 3% regulation make this unit look pretty impressive on paper, but will Thermaltake be able to deliver? Let's find out.

Let's have no misunderstandings here, this is a huge box, something like 16 inches long! Let's take a look inside.

Here we can clearly see all the box contents, neatly secured in hard-cell molded foam blocks. A stellar job of packing, nothing in here is moving an inch.

Here's a better look at the box contents; the main supply unit, Velcro bag with rail leads, and a special, high-gauge power cord. I'll note here that even if you already have a power cord, use this one instead. Standard power cords aren't rated for the high current draw this psu can demand.

A shot of the main and EPS connectors. As you can see, this supply features a 20+4, 4+4 and 8 pin connectors, all of which are hard wired to the unit.

This is the connector bank, located on the front of the unit. They are simple clip-latches, like those found on the motherboard power connectors. This worried me for a second, thinking they would be too loose. After a couple minutes of trying to shake a connected lead out of place, I was proven dead wrong. These clip connectors are easy to insert and remove leads from, but almost impossible to accidentally disconnect. Very impressive.

Shown here is the rail division chart to help the user balance out the load draw. White, as I've found out is actually +12V1&2 bridged together, not just +12V1.

A host of leads spills forth from that little black bag! Included are two 4-connector Molex leads, with floppy, two 4-connector SATA leads, three 6-pin PCI-e leads, three 8-pin PCI-e leads, and three 8 to 6-pin PCI-e adaptors.

On the rear of the unit, the venting and power switch can be seen. Looking inside the case, we can also see some of the transforming hardware. I will add that this switch is incredibly easy to find and switch while groping blindly for it. It is also illuminated by an internal LED.

The huge 140mm cooling fan is impossible to miss, but instead of standing out, it attempts to blend in, creating a pleasing look. I'll also mention that this fan does not protrude from the casing at all, but is flush-mounted. This may make installation a bit easier in some cases.

Testing was performed using a Coolmax LCD tester and a Fluke 87 multimeter. Here's the test in progress:

Wow, I'm impressed by those numbers. The highest deviation is in the 5V rails at 2%! Any way you want to look at it, that's superb regulation.

The multimeter actually broke that down further, reading the 5V rails at an average of 5.055v, making the actual percent regulation only 1%! I'm highly impressed with these readings.

Some things of note here. The power supply does conform perfectly to the ATX form factor in HxW. The length is not covered in the specification, but it comes out to 7.87 inches, which is significantly longer than your average supply case. This can cause some difficulties mounting in some of the more basic cases, especially if they are designed to use a specific included psu.

Also, the fan is supposed to be 14dba at 1300 rpm. Either the parameters of this test were non-standard, or the fan never spins at 1300 rpm, as I can hear it from 3 feet away, if barely. However, it isn't at all loud, simply audible as an air noise. In a functional PC, I suspect this noise level would be drowned out by normal operating sounds. All in all, I found the noise level to be closer to 22dba than 14. I might add that this does not in any way deter me from using the product, but do not expect total silence, either.

All in all, I am blown away by this product. Having been a long time OCZ GameXstream user, I had no idea coming into this review what the comparison would be. I'm pleased to report that I've officially retired the GameXstream in favor of this Toughpower unit, both for features and PCI-e/SLI compatibilities.

The features and parts package with the Toughpower are tough to beat. A 5 year warranty and 120,000 hour MTBF are big numbers, folks. The voltage regulation is superb, and the quality of construction top notch. To sum it all up:

All in all, this is a marvelous product, and I can't recommend it highly enough. If you need to power an overclocked SLI gaming machine, this is the way to go. Although the price may be a bit prohibitive at around $325, this is a power supply that will last you a long time and perform perfectly, no matter what you ask of it.