Thermaltake Express Power 450

A quick fix solution that actually works.

During our testing, if a PSU waved the White Flag, we didn’t let it off the hook. Instead, we went all World Bank and helped it with some extra watts until it got through the tests.

This is what we used to do it.

The Thermaltake Express power 450 is a dedicated graphics card power supply that works in tandem with your normal PSU. It connects via a passthrough 24-pin system power cable that takes a split of the green /PS_ON wire, so both it and your normal PSU turn on when you push the power button on your case.

This is an excellent thing, and not just because it lets you put something other than a single DVD-burner in your case’s multiple 5.25in bays. If you’ve just thrown a second graphics card into your PC and your old PSU can’t cope, it’s an elegant way to solve the problem.

It uses a non-standard power lead that threads through an included backplane and grommet out the back of your PC, so if you’re going to get one and plan on moving your PC to LANs often, remember you’ll end up with a second lead running into your computer which is pretty firmly fixed.