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- Date:
- Wednesday, April 25, 2007
- Author:
- Paul Johnson
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
Thermaltake ToughPower 1200W
Having a PSU that is rated at 1200 watts is a big deal. Having a PSU that will give you 1200 watts under stressful conditions is quite another. We put the Toughpower 1200w into the oven and see if it stands up to its 1200 watt power claims. Don't miss this one.
Overview
The first thing we are going to look at with the Toughpower 1200w is its packaging, accessories, and documentation. While none of these items is a real make or break item for a power supply the packaging quite often contains a lot of information about the product we are purchasing. The inclusion of an owner’s manual that provides actual information about our product is also of great help. Accessories are almost unnecessary with a power supply as the unit is self contained, unless it is modular, but there cases where a manufacturer can include useful accessories to make installation, routing and use more efficient.
The Thermaltake Toughpower packaging overall is middle of the road in regards to information about the power supply. It does include most of the pertinent pieces of information such as power table and output connectors displayed on the box. These pieces of information will be broken down below in table form.
Other than that information and a features list there is no mention of warranty or efficiency numbers on the box like we have seen on a number of the power supplies we have reviewed to date. Interestingly this trend continues to the user manual which is one of the most bizarrely informative and non-informative at the same time, but this will be covered in more detail below. These missing pieces of information pertaining to warranty that were absent from the packaging are covered on the Thermaltake website. The Toughpower and all Thermaltake power supplies are covered by a 5 year warranty as dictated on both the product page and in Thermaltake warranty section.
The Toughpower's efficiency is noted as being up to 87% on the product page:
Active Power Factor Correction (PF>0.99) and high efficiency (up to 87%)
But the product ads on Thermaltake’s website, and elsewhere across the web, read 87%+. During our testing today we will find out where in this spectrum of 80% to 87%+ the Toughpower actually falls.
The last thing of interest not noted on the Thermaltake packaging is SLI or Crossifre certification. A quick check of SLIZone does not turn up the Toughpower 1200w however the Thermaltake website indicates it is Quad-SLI certified. Also of interest we find the non-modular version of the Toughpower on the Crossfire certification list. The lack of packaging branding is likely due to NVIDIA’s requirements to not list the "SLI Certified" badging on packages that have other manufacturer’s certification. So yes, if there is a CrossFire Certified badge, you can’t have an SLI Certified badge. Childishness from NVIDIA? In our opinion, yes. Thermaltake has likely just left both off so as to not ruffle NVIDIA’s delicate feathers.
The most outstanding thing about all the information presented on the Toughpower box is the seemingly amazing fact that Thermaltake appears to indicate this power supply is capable of producing nearly 100% of its output capacity on the 12v rails. Previously we have seen the Corsair HX620 come the closest to this by offering 97% but still not 100% of its capacity. Indeed, the Toughpower user manual and the unit itself also indicate that the units 12v combined max is not to exceed 100A. This is a first in our testing and a claim that we will have to examine, however due to the units minimum load requirements this may be slightly problematic to achieve.
Beyond the amazing 12v capacity the Toughpower 1200w features a connector count in accordance with what we have come to expect on higher end power supplies. There are 8 SATA connectors good for SATA RAID configurations, three 8-pin PCI-Express connectors good for future GPUs, and three 6-pin PCI-Express connectors. These features coupled with the units impressively sized 12v output would seem to make the unit a perfect match for any high-end multiprocessor multicore multiGPU high-end system, if Thermaltake can deliver on their promises.
Once we open the Toughpower packaging we find the Toughpower itself, the cables, the manual, accessory box, a silicon/rubber gasket, some silica, and a baggy of screws. The one accessory box includes the power cord as labeled but no "screw." Our "screw" was loose in the main box; certainly not a big deal but somewhat amusing. As we have seen from a number of companies now the manual that comes with the Thermaltake Toughpower is mostly complete. The manual weighs in at 20 pages and includes all the technical specs including ripple/noise (they even tell you how to properly measure the ripple/noise), voltage regulation, pinouts for connectors, over voltage set points, 12v rail distribution, and on. However, there is but one line pertaining to efficiency, which lists it at greater than 80% at full load with 115v input, and no mention of the warranty which we tracked down on Thermaltake’s website earlier. These bizarre omissions aside, the manual is very informative and ranks up there with what we saw from Ultra in both information and consistency issues but barely behind the Enermax Galaxy DXX information due to the missing information.