X-bit labs

Roundup: 14 Power Supply Units from Thermaltake (page 21)

Category: Other

by Oleg Artamonov

[ 07/28/2006 | 08:34 AM ]

PurePower 600AP (W0083, 600W)

After a few models manufactured by HEC/Compucase, here is yet another Sirtec. This power supply has a dark shiny case and is cooled with a single 12cm fan.

This PSU doesn’t seem to resemble any of the earlier tested ones at first sight, but on closer inspection you can notice that its circuit design and components are the same as in the above-discussed second-revision W0049. You say there’s no second card on the heatsinks? Well, it just now stands upright along the rear panel and is secured on its own connector which was straight and long in the W0049, but is now short and L-shaped. Like the W0049, this power supply is based on a CM6800G chip, has an active PFC device, and supports group voltage regulation.

The declared load currents are the same as the W0049’s, which is somewhat odd. Calculate the total allowable load on the +12V rail. It is 52A or 642W, i.e. higher than the full output power of the PSU. Well, let’s assume that there’s 50A (50A * 12V = 600W) there, and they just forgot to write the combined limitation for all the three +12V lines on the label (I said it a number of times in my earlier reviews that it’s the combined output power of all the +12V outputs that matters in a power supply with “virtual” division of the +12V power rail into several outputs; the current limits on each of these outputs is not important at all).

More about limitations. The division into several output lines was introduced to comply with the safety standard that demands that there be no more than 240VA on user-accessible lines. In other words, the current shouldn’t exceed 20A for a voltage of 12V. They usually limit the voltage at 18A to have some safety margin, but here the +12V2 line has a limit of 23A, so the power supply doesn’t formally comply with the mentioned safety standard.

The PSU has the following cables and connectors:

• Mainboard power cable with a 20+4-pin connector, 56cm long
• CPU power cable with a 4+4-pin connector, 55cm
• Two graphics card power cables with 6-pin connectors, 55cm
• One cable with two Molex connectors, 54cm+20cm
• Two cables with three Molex connectors and one floppy mini-plug on each; 54cm from the PSU case to the first connector and 20cm more to each next connector
• Two cables with two SATA power connectors on each, 57cm+19cm
• Two fan power cables with 4-pin Molex connectors, 56cm
• Cable of the PSU fan velocity sensor, 61cm

The cables are sleeved.