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Thermaltake Purepower RX 600W

We move from Thermaltake's Toughpower to its line branded the "Purepower." No doubt that when you are buying a power supply for your upgrade or new build you want "pure power" and enough of it to handle today's power hungry CPUs and GPUs.

Overview

The first thing we are going to look at with the Purepower RX 600W 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 Thermaltake Purepower RX 600W comes in a white box dominated on front and back by pictures of the Purepower RX 600W. Like the QFan 650W we recently reviewed there isn’t much information on the packaging as it just sports a few marketing points about the unit followed by a listing of all the connectors, some more marketing points, and various safety certifications. Like the QFan 650W at the time of writing the Purepower RX 600W packaging did not list the unit as being either SLI certified or 80Plus certified but we checked both sites anyway to see if maybe the packaging just did not reflect these two points. While we found a Thermaltake power supply rated at 600w at the 80Plus website it was the Toughpower 600W not the Purepower RX 600W. However, the Purepower RX 600W is based on the CWT PSH-600 which is 80Plus certified. At the SLIZone website we find a single Purepower entry for the 500w unit in the 8800GTS listing. So again, like the QFan 650W, we would expect this unit should be capable of being 80% efficient and running an 8800GTS SLI setup even though at the time of writing it was not specifically listed as such. Lastly, the packaging does not indicate the length of warranty on the Purepower RX 600W but the Thermaltake website gives it as being 5 years. This is not the longest warranty we have seen to date but it is certainly adequate for the majority of users.

The Thermaltake Purepower RX 600W certainly has all the makings of a mid-range power supply with its output capacity, rail distribution, and connector count. We see that the most important rails in the power supply for modern PCs, the 12v rails, are allocated a total of 48A or 96% of the unit’s total DC output capacity if necessary. This output percentage and the actual individual rail allotments are identical to the slightly more powerful QFan 650W. Coupled with this we find that the unit has a total of three 6-pin PCI-Express connectors, seven Molex connectors, and six SATA connectors. These connectors are allocated in a sufficient manner for this size power supply and again identical to the QFan 650W with the exception of the substitution of a 6-pin PCI-Express connector for an 8-pin PCI-Express connector. Otherwise the unit has the same caveats we found with the QFan 650W in that two 6-Pin PCI-Express connectors are on the same rail as ½ the EPS connectors and that rail is limited to 18A. Now while a 6-pin PCI-Express connector is only supposed to support 75w, or 6.25A, there are two on the same rail here which in theory could draw 13A leaving the EPS connector with 6A. While this seems sufficient, early multi-12v arrangements that housed more than two PCI-Express connectors on one rail and were capped at 18A occasionally ran into issues.

Like the QFan 650W the Purepower RX 600W lists specific loading instructions for SLI or CrossFire configurations that the user should pay close attention to. Below are the instructions in general terms but the manual includes a table for specific various SLI and CrossFire configurations as well. Section 5 of the manual states:

For the below SLI and CrossFire dual graphic card mode, you have to use one PCI-Express connector which comes out from the power supply unit and one modularized PCI-Express connector for best performance and stability.

For other entry level SLI or CrossFire graphic cards, you can use two 6-pin modularized PCI-Express connectors.

First, high level SLI or CrossFire dual graphic card mode installation:

Connect the PCI-Express connector which comes out from power supply unit and one 6-Pin modularized connector to your dual graphic cards.

Additionally, the unit indicates a proper loading pattern for SLI setups when using the 8PIN EPS or 4PIN ATX connector that users should read as well before setting up their system.

Now given this unit is “only” 600w, it seems unlikely a wise user would be placing this power supply in such a system that would encounter an issue like this. Further, Thermaltake does explicitly tell users how to avoid this possible issue in the user manual but it could be improved none the less. We would like to say kudos to Thermaltake for being aware of this issue and making an honest effort to notify the user. This is head and shoulders beyond what we have seen many other companies do in the same situation.

Once we open the Thermaltake Purepower RX 600W packaging we find the usual assortment of the power supply, a box with the power cord and mounting screws (which aren’t in the box), a baggy with a rubber mounting gasket (and the mounting screws not in the mounting screw box), a box containing the modular cables, the user manual, and a warranty card. The manual weighs in at 19 pages in English only and is very good. It provides the majority of the electrical specifications about the unit, power label, pinouts, rail distribution, contact information, installation instructions, and some basic troubleshooting. We have only seen a few other manuals that were more complete and those simply included the derating curves when applicable, fan speed graph, and efficiency curves. The information included in the Purepower RX manual, like that in the Toughpower QFan 650W manual, is all useful and well presented; especially the part about how to load the PCI-Express connectors.