X-bit labs

Roundup: 14 Power Supply Units from Thermaltake (page 27)

Category: Other

by Oleg Artamonov

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

Conclusion

Thermaltake’s power supplies leave one with a whole spectrum of emotions. Well, there could hardly be one emotion and one opinion because the company’s model range includes products of different classes and manufactured by four different brands. Generally speaking, Thermaltake’s power supply nomenclature lacks order, including completely different models with unsuggestive names. For example, the W0063 is a high-quality midrange product, but the W0070 is a low-end model that is not worth half the money asked for it. The W0073 is the same W0063, but with a couple of extra accessories in the box. So I can’t find any logic in the model names. It’s better with the marketing names of the products: the letter index indicates the type of the power factor correction device (“AP” stands for active PFC, “PP” stands for passive PFC, and “NP” means lack of any power factor correction), but you have to come to this arcane knowledge by yourself because there are no such suffixes on the Thermaltake website, just model numbers like “W00xx”.

This nomenclature rises to a level of absurdity with the two revisions of the PurePower 680APD model, one of which is almost completely unfit for work whereas the other is a very good power supply. Both have the same model number of W0049.

Of course, the older power supplies from the TR2 series – the XP480 and the XP550 (W0070) – look least attractive of all. They are not so very bad by themselves, but their original wattage ratings were 250W and 300W, respectively, and were transformed into 400W and 430W after they were branded as Thermaltake’s products. Quite naturally, none of these power supplies can give you the specified output power. They burn out at much lower loads, although they would have received better feedback from me if Thermaltake had been more modest. As you may guess, I’m disappointed when a power supply doesn’t perform that well in my tests, but I’m just raging when I find that a power supply’s characteristics differ radically from what is specified by the manufacturer!

Thermaltake made some amends to the users with its newer TR2 series units. The specified wattage of the W0093 is overstated by only 50W, and it passed through my tests alive. When I tried to squeeze the specified output power out of it, its protection worked sooner than its transistors got burned.

Most of the PurePower series units are midrange models. They don’t have exceptional parameters, but are free from obvious defects, if you don’t count in the fantastically ill-designed first revision of the W0049 model. However, it’s no use to make general statements about the whole PurePower series because it includes a lot of very diverse models, some of which differ from each other not only in the circuit design but also in their actual manufacturer, while others are only externally different (for example, the W0063 and the W0083).

And finally the Toughpower series (to be exact, its single representative I tested in this review) left a very nice impression. Well, it was expectable because this power supply betrayed its actual manufacturer at first glance and we had already tested CWT’s power supplies of this class under the brands of Antec and Foxconn. So again, the good performance of this model was not a surprise to me.

I also want to add a few words about the noise characteristics of Thermaltake’s power supplies because it’s one of the focus points for the discussions at Web forums. The models with manual speed controllers are discussed in the first place. Of course, it’s a very subjective thing to evaluate the noisiness of a power supply in terms of “noisy” or “quiet”, but Thermaltake’s models are mostly right in the middle between these two categories. For example, my colleagues from Silentpcreview.com would most likely have condemned all the models in this review as noisy, but their resource is oriented at those users who set silence as the main priority and who select other fans in the system in such a way as to not hear them at all. As for ordinary users, a majority of them will be quite satisfied with the noise characteristics of the power supplies from Thermaltake, I think.

I also want to note that manual control over the fan speed doesn’t necessarily mean that the power supply works quietly. For example, the W0057 comes with a control panel, but you cannot slow the fan down to below 1200rpm. Moreover, this panel cannot silence the second fan enclosed with the power supply, either. And you cannot easily replace the fan with a quieter one because the panel only supports some special fans from Thermaltake. So, if you pay more for such an enhanced-functionality power supply, think if you really need this extra functionality and if you will be able to use it at all.

Appendix

Click here for the cross-load data for the tested power supplies.

Click here to download the viewer for the cross-load data.