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Thermaltake Purepower RX 600 watt modular power supply PDF Print E-mail
Written by Technohydra   
Dec 06, 2007 at 11:39 AM

Thermaltake recently sent us a box of goodies, and the Purepower RX 600 watt modular PSU was one of the samples included.  Like most of the new power supplies from Thermaltake, this unit features a high-tech black (gunmetal) finish, 140mm silent cooling fan, and modular cabling.  Let's see what else we can find out.

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Here's a shot of the front of the box.  Thermaltake has does a great job of combining looks and protection for their products with their recent offerings.  Note the conformance to the ATX 2.2 specification listed on the box.

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Here's a shot of the rear panel of the box.  Points must be awarded here for showing the actual connectors included in with this supply, as all too often you have to guess.  That's fine when you're looking around online, as you can surely find pictures of the cables somewhere.  Shopping Fry's or Best Buy is a different story, as the frown on you hacking open boxes in the store.

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Gotta love the info panel, it saves us so much typing!  Here's the output specs as listed on the box, and as you can see, they're fairly impressive.  Claiming an average regulation of 4.5% is a pretty big statement.  The average efficiency, however is not listed here, and is rated at 78%, full load, although at lower load capacities, this number will be higher.

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A shot of the inside of the box and packaging.  Thermaltake uses a lot of molded hard-cell foam inserts for packing these days, and it does a great job of keeping things from getting damaged.  See the gasket-looking thing near the back of the box?  That's actually a vibration dampening sleeve, which gets installed onto the back of the PSU.  Very cool concept.  Also included are the leads, screws for mounting, owners manual, case badge, and grounded power cable.

Speaking of case badge, looking at the badge for this product, you will notice that it is part of Thermaltakes "Key 3 Spirit" line.  This is a relatively new marketing concept, and all products in the line-up must meet the 3 goals of this program; performance quality, silent operation, and thermal conciousness.  That's all well and good on paper, but we'll see how it measures up later!

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Here's the main unit and power cord.  As you can see, the output information is also listed on the casing.  The dimensions are 5.9"(L)x6.3"(W)x3.4"(H), and the unit weighs 5.1 pounds.  These dimensions should allow for mounting in almost any mid-tower sized or larger case.

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Shown here are the hard-wired connectors, the 20+4 pin main and a native PCI-E 6-pin lead.  Notice that there is no 4+4 pin EPS connector?  That one, for some reason, is modular.

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A nice little added bonus, the rail divisions are charted for you.  This is handy for balancing the load across the rails, which will improve your overall efficiency.

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Here we have the rail connection points.  The leads have a locking clip that snaps into the power supply, providing a very secure, but easy to release hold.  These leads aren't falling out on accident.

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The aforementioned 140mm stock cooling fan.  The fan is flush-mounted to facilitate easier mounting in a variety of cases.  No flash or lights here, but the airflow to noise ratio is what's important, and this fan delivers.

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A shot of the rear panel.  Clearly visible through the venting area are the regulation coils, even brightly coloered for your viewing enjoyment.  The switch is fairly standard, as is the power plug.  Take note of the mounting holes.  They do indeed match up perfectly with the ATX standard.

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Here's all of the included leads.  Just to clarify, there is one 4+4 EPS lead, 2 6-pin PCI-E leads, 2 4-pin Molex(4)+floppy leads, and 2 SATA(2) leads.  For this level of power output, this should be about the right mix of connections.

Testing

For power supply testing, the PSU is connected to a Coolmax power supply tester while under load, and the voltages are read.  These voltages are then verified with a Fluke 87 multimeter. 

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As a correction, the +5.0V and 5.0VSB readings are high on the tester.  The multimeter captured these rails at 5.12v and 5.23v, respectively.  All other readings were within 1% of the shown value.  Ok, let's break these results down into some hard numbers.

+3.3V: 3.3v, +/-0% 

+5.0V: 5.12v, +2.4%

5VSB: 5.24v, +4.8%

+12V1: 12.0v, +/-0%

+12V2: 12.1v, +0.8%

-12V: 12.0, +/-0%

Average Regulation: +1.33%

I will add that the 5VSB rail would likely have been closer to the mark if there had been more load on it, as it was virtually unloaded.

The fan impressed me, I must say.  1900 RPM and less than 17dba.  This is truely silent, unless you commonly rest your head on your PSU while gaming.  And I must say, 1.33% average regulation at around 80% is a great rating.

Conclusion

There's just not a lot to complain about here.  The leads are modular, other than the mains and a native 6-pin PCI-E connector, the Molex connectors are E Z Grip style, plenty of connectors for all but the craziest of machines, silence, good looks and size.  Add to that the 1.33% average regulation and you've got a great soure of juice for all your favorite chips.  I'd say the biggest issue I have is the efficiency rating being under 80% average, if not by much.  Well, let's wrap it up.

Pros:
  1. Should fit almost any case.
  2. Operates silently, and produces little heat.
  3. Modular leads help reduce wiring jumble.
  4. Leads are also loomed, improving airflow.
  5. Plenty of connectors.  Unless you have a ton of hardware, this PSU will cover everything.
  6. Fantastic average regulation.  The power it says is basically the power you get.
  7. Conforms to the ATX 2.2 standards perfectly.

Cons:

  1. Efficiency rating is a little lower than optimal, would prefer 80%+.
  2. Not a PSU for a high-end system.  Whereas you can run SLI and overclock with this power supply, you'll never overclock, run RAID arrays, and SLI 2 8800GTX's at the same time.  Just know how much power you need and buy accordingly.

Rating

rating90

 

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