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- Date:
- Monday , July 02, 2007
- Author:
- Paul Johnson
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
PC Power & Cooling Turbo-Cool 1KW-SR
If PC Power & Cooling has anything, it has a great reputation for making awesome computer power supplies. Today we weigh in on the self-proclaimed "Biggest, Baddest Power Supply - Period!" Is their 1 kilowatt PSU that big, and that bad, and what about value?
Overview
The first thing we are going to look at with the PC Power & Cooling Turbo-Cool 1KW-SR is its packaging, accessories, and documentation. While normally none of these items is a 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 are cases where a manufacturer can include useful accessories to make installation, routing, and use more efficient.
The packaging for the PC Power & Cooling Turbo-Cool 1KW-SR is huge and doubles as the actual shipping box, which is why our box is so dirty and worn. The information on the box is exceedingly sparse like some of the units we saw in our 450w-500w PSU Battle Royal, however we do find that the unit is rated at 50c, has a 5 year warranty, and is “High Efficiency with .98 Power Factor.”
This last point above needs some clarification so that it is not mistaken to mean that the unit is 98% efficient. The Power Factor of a unit is the ratio of real power to apparent power not the ratio of DC power output to AC power input. This labeling could be seen as ambiguous and is at the very least “curiously” worded. I would hope that users have not been seeing this and buying this unit thinking they were getting a 98% efficient power supply because as we will see in a bit that is not the case.
The packaging furthermore proclaims that the unit has an “Amazingly Quiet Cooling System.” While we do not measure sound in quantifiable terms during our reviews due to our test setup we will give our subjective impressions on this aspect later in testing.
The box also stated that the unit is SLI certified and indeed the SLI Zone website indicates that is certified for 8800Ultra SLI. We also find that the unit is Crossfire certified for HD2900XT when we view the ATI Crossfire page. Of interest though is that unlike other manufacturers who have maintained two SKUs in order to display both certifications on their packaging, PC Power & Cooling has not. PC Power & Cooling has followed labeling requirements imposed by NVIDIA’s SLI certification and left CrossFire badging off of this box. (NVIDIA will not allow their “SLI Ready” certification badge to be shown along ATI’s “CrossFire Ready” badge.)
Finally, we find that the unit carries a 5 year warranty. This is certainly on the longer end of warranties we have seen and given the unit’s cost right it in line with what we would hope to see.
The Power and Cooling Turbo-Cool 1KW-SR power label is certainly that of a high end unit with ~85% of its capacity available on the 12v rail. This unit was originally offered in a multi 12v rail configuration and Win-Tact maintains a number of multi 12v rail configurations similar to this unit but in its current form the unit has been reworked in order to provide a single large 12v rail available only through PC Power & Cooling. The specifications on the power label of the Turbo-Cool 1KW-SR hardly make it the “biggest, baddest power supply,” as we have seen both power supplies with larger total DC outputs in the Thermaltake ToughPower 1200w and larger 12v ratings in the Thermaltake ToughPower 1200w, the SilverStone Olympia 1000w, and the Enermax Galaxy DXX.
The connector count on the PC Power & Cooling Turbo-Cool 1KW-SR is decent in the retail package but lacks 8 pin PCI-Express connectors so users with HD2900XT video cards are going to have to plug in just the 6-Pin or use an adapter with this unit. The good news is it does ship with 4 of these 6 Pin PCI-Express connectors so the vast majority of users should be able to make do. Also included in the connector count are 8 Molex, 6 SATA, and 2 8 Pin CPU power connectors (along with another 4 pin P4/AUX). Again we find that the unit comes up a bit short in comparison to other units on the market in the connector department as the ToughPower 1200w has more combined Molex/SATA connectors by 2, the Ultra X3 by 4, the lowly Infiniti 720w by 4, and absolutely crushed by the Enermax Galaxy DXX by a margin of 23 to 14. So again by the numbers the PC Power & Cooling Turbo-Cool 1KW-SR sports fall short of being the “biggest, baddest power supply,” in its out-of-the-box retail form.
Astute readers will no doubt be aware that PC Power & Cooling offers a service where in a customer can have any wiring harness tacked down on their unit that they chose for an extra fee if they call up PC Power & Cooling and place an order. This service is one of the things that does set PC Power & Cooling apart in the market place and unfortunately is completely missed by a user purchasing their product in retail without returning the unit to PC Power & Cooling to have it refitted.
Once we open the retail box we find the Turbo-Cool 1KW-SR itself, the power cord, a bag of screws, a test report, and nothing else. That’s right folks this unit shipped sans manual and silica. It seems PC Power & Cooling is expecting these units to literally fly off the shelf as they have not included desiccant to prevent corrosion. The lack of a user manual though is ridiculous and if unintentional sloppy since these units are supposed to be hand tested as the inclusion of the test report is supposed to indicate. Additionally, the unit’s wires come bound in some ghetto fabulous plain rubber bands. Sure, nice packaging is mostly superficial but it at least gives the appearance that the $500 a user has just spent bought them something other than a power supply slapped into a cardboard box by a shipping drone. In the end whether it is intentional or not the lack of a user manual and over all packaging is simply unforgivable in a $500 product.