Power Supply Roundup: Eight 1000W for the Extreme Users
by Christoph Katzer on December 11, 2007 9:30 PM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
Thermaltake Toughpower 1000W (W0132RU)
Thermaltake power supplies are often quite nice to look at, and the bronze palette fits nicely with the red of the button and the cover for the coils. The power supply is quite long - we'll find out why in a moment. One thing that perplexes us is the fan-grill for the large fan on the bottom. Thermaltake punches holes in the casing, making the use of a separate grille unnecessary. The problem with this method is the decreased amount of air that can pass through the holes. If you compare a normal fan-grille to this one, it is obvious the standard fan-grille will allow for better airflow. To compensate, it may be necessary to run the fan at higher RPMs, which is not something most people desire.
The label is quite different from what we are used to with other power supplies. This has something to do with the fact that there are in fact two power supplies inside the chassis. We will see this when we open up the unit. The left side shows two 12V rails with the 3.3V rail together and a maximum combined power of 500W. The right side shows two 12V rails and the 5V rail together with a maximum of 500W as well. Together that is 1000W. Each of the 12V rails is equipped with either 20A or 36A. The 36A on each side will be useful for the highest-end graphics cards.
Thermaltake includes a vast amount of cable harnesses as can be seen in the shot above. There are six PCI-E connectors - three 6-pin and three 6/8-pin. The length varies from 45 to 60cm. There are four additional peripheral harnesses, providing six Molex and six SATA connectors in total.
Now comes the interesting part. As we can clearly see, there are two separate power supplies inside the housing. Each one has its own PFC stage, transformer, and secondary stage with all solid capacitors. This means each part shares only the input filtering stage. We saw this topology with the PC Power & Cooling Turbo Cool 1200W and the performance was very good. The only problem was the lack of airflow through the power supply, and we will see if Thermaltake fares better in this regard. PC Power & Cooling used two separate PCBs, vertically mounted on the main PCB. Thermaltake took a different approach and installed two circuits on one PCB. The advantage of the Thermaltake design is better cooling for the components. The fan blows directly at the components and heatsinks.
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brian_riendeau - Tuesday, December 18, 2007 - link
Depending on what site you check, I think you would find that very few 1000+ watt PSUs can sustain that output under load in real world conditions 100v to 120v. I am somewhat skeptical of that fact that 8 PSUs got tested here, and not a single one was labelled as a failure to provide on the rated specs.buzznut - Thursday, December 13, 2007 - link
So we have a line-up of 430 watt supplies, a comparison of 750-850 watt models, one of 1000 watts, and the "extreme" Power supplies at 1200W+.Anyone else notice the little gap there?
What about the 500-700 range, arguably the most popular with system builders right now? I can't even fathom why you would choose to ignore this segment.
Do ya think you could cover the more relevant enthusiest segment since this site is viewed by many enthusiests every day? I mean the ones that don't have $300 to blow on a power supply when a 650 watt one will do the job. Or ones that don't receive their equipment for free because they review hardware...
I buy a lot of equipment every year but I am not wealthy. I get tired of reviewers who tell me about the latest 700 dolla video card or other stuff I'll never be able to afford.
MadAd - Wednesday, December 12, 2007 - link
Nice touch adding in the Euro prices, a welcome change, infact a first in over 8 years of readership i think.Just a quick point, i think the import duty allowances on purchases abroad are very low, so flying to the US is fine for a holiday, but unless you are prepared to break the law and claim it as your pc you took out or something, then you would have to pay duty and vat as if youd had it shipped. Add to that any warranty claims may be null or awkward to service then it may not be the bargain it could be.
Christoph Katzer - Wednesday, December 12, 2007 - link
Wasn't really meant you would need to book a flight to go the States to buy a PSU... Of course there are import taxes (19-19,4% for France and Germany).PolymerTim - Wednesday, December 12, 2007 - link
Is there a power supply roundup coming out any time soon for something like 400W-700W. I've been reading through the PS forums lately and it seems like a lot of the recommended PS fall somewhere around the 450W-650W range and this seems to be missing from the roundups. I realize there were a lot of individual reviews in this range not too long ago, but there are several new options in this range in the last few months that I think deserve a review a bit more than yet another "ultra high" or "extreme" roundup. Just for illustration, I posted the date and title of every anandtech PS roundup since the new PS test methods came out 5 months ago. See the gap? We have 3 roundups between 730W-1300W and 1 roundup at 400W-450W.12-11 Power Supply Roundup: Eight 1000W for the Extreme Users
11-22 Power Supply Roundup: 730W to 900W
11-06 400-450W PSU Roundup
10-22 Ultra High-End PSU Roundup (1200W to 1300W)
Of course, many PS in this range were reviewed, but never in a roundup compared to other similar PS.
09-14 Seasonic S12II: 330W to 500W of Silence
09-11 Enermax Infiniti 650W
09-03 Zippy Serene (GP2-5600V)
08-27 Silver Power Blue Lightning 600W
08-08 Silverstone Decathlon DA650: A modular alternative
07-30 The Enermax Liberty - Getting long in the tooth, but still worth a look
07-24 Gigabyte's New Odin GT 800W Power Supply
07-18 PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750 Quad CF-Edition
07-13 The Single 12V Rail SilverStone Olympia OP650
Christoph Katzer - Wednesday, December 12, 2007 - link
Yeah this year still 600-650 watts...halcyon - Wednesday, December 12, 2007 - link
How about also another type of article:How to build a computer that does 90% of what people need (sans games) and runs on less than 30W?
800-1000W is insane and people should come around to understanding that.
strikeback03 - Wednesday, December 12, 2007 - link
I'm pretty sure even most laptops don't draw that little power. Not sure on the newer C2D processors, but I know the older Dothan Pentium M processors had a TDP in the 20-25W range. Add the rest of a system and you likely won't spend much time below 30W.Or check out some carputer setups. Using VIA mini-ITX motherboards with integrated processors and graphics and they still typically use 90-160W power supplies.
JarredWalton - Wednesday, December 12, 2007 - link
At idle, most of the moderate notebooks (14-15" chassis) sit at around 25W. Load, they'll get up to around 60W with IGP and 100W with something like an 8700M GT. 8800M GTX will probably push that closer to 125W (give or take 10W).jonnyGURU - Wednesday, December 12, 2007 - link
I'm game (no pun intended.)I built a machine with all on board components, a mobile AMD chip and solid state drives and it still required over 200W to run. Mind you it had a 7950 graphics card, but still.....