Thermaltake ToughPower 1500 Watt PSU: more power than you can poke a PC at
Shane Baxtor10 September 2008, 8:00 AM
Can you ever have too much power? We answer that question with the help of a Thermaltake ToughPower PSU.
When the 1000 Watt power supply came out only recently, people really did think that it was more power than they’d ever use. The main problem with power supplies, though, is that not all are created equally. There really is more to a power supply than simply slapping a sticker on displaying its wattage. It’s enough to make one wonder how two power supplies with exactly the same wattage can cost two completely different prices.
Over the last few months we’ve seen 1000 Watt power supplies fall to the new GTX 280 from NVIDIA when running in SLI or Tri SLI mode. While our power readings only hit around the 700 Watt mark when running two in an overclocked quad core system, particular 1000 Watt power supplies are shutting systems down mid-testing due to poor amperage available or generally just cheap construction inside the chassis.
Thermaltake is here to the rescue you, however, with the release of a whopping 1.5KW unit that is designed to keep up with the latest and greatest graphics card releases. When you buy a power supply, it’s something that you expect to last for years. If you’re big into purchasing the latest and greatest in components, there’s nothing worse than getting home, plugging in your new $1,000 graphic card setup and seeing it fall over when you fire up your favourite game.
Specification wise, the Thermaltake 1500 Watt unit looks impressive. With a total of 100 amps split across four 12V rails, we really do have plenty of power sitting there just waiting to go. Apart from the +12V lines, the +3.3V and +5V lines come in at 30 amps each. The whole setup behind the unit is like having two 750 Watt power supplies moulded into a single chassis. Along with the high amperage on hand, we have a huge amount of connectivity as well. There’s four 6-pin and four 8-pin PCI Express connectors, eight SATA connectors, eight molex connectors, two floppy connectors and the standard 24-pin and two 8-pin CPU connectors.
The unit is cooled by a 140mm fan that runs between 1,300 and 2,300rpm, outputting 16dBA at its lowest speed. The larger fan, in combination with the huge amount of wattage on offer, means that the power supply is longer than some of your standard 800 Watt and below models. While the most common size for a power supply is around the 140mm mark, like most 1000 Watt units, the Thermaltake power supply comes in at a longer 200mm. While for the most part this isn’t a problem, if you’re in a case that does have a fan which runs across the top, it may have to be removed so the unit can be installed properly.
For the most part the expensive cost associated with the 1500 Watt Thermaltake power supply is going to be hard to swallow for a lot of people, but if you’re a regular buyer of $500 graphics cards or $1,000 processors then you’d understand the importance of a quality power supply.
Although, if you only buy an extremely high-end computer every three years or so, then we wouldn’t recommend you spend the extra money purchasing a 1500 Watt power supply. Rather, it would make sense to save the cash and buy a quality 1000 Watt unit.
If, on the other hand, you’re looking at buying a new power supply today to power that new CrossFire HD 4870 X2 system that you will probably no doubt upgrade once again when the next cream of the crop card comes out from either NVIDIA or AMD, we would highly recommend you really take the time to look at a higher wattage power supply like the 1500 Watt unit we have here that ran our HD 4870 X2 cards in CrossFire on our overclocked quad core system without missing a single beat.