Rock-solid, reliable power from the tough guys at Thermaltake. Okay, not one of our best lead ins...
Power supplies are often the most overlooked component in a rig, and as the Atomican's Choice awards showed this very Issue, they're usually quite particular about their units. While the big guns of Corsair and Antec are generally good choices, Thermaltake has reworked its range of Toughpower units and is offering them at a wallet-friendly $200. This is pretty cheap for a modular power supply, but it doesn't skimp on much.
Encased in a love-it-or-hate-it off-green/gold case whose colour is incredibly awkward to describe, the XT uses a large 140mm fan to perform all intake and exhaust duties, with a small wedge of plastic internally to direct airflow. Under load the unit gets quite warm, blowing out a lot of warm air, but it was never hot. Interestingly the fan continues spinning for a short while after the system shuts down, a neat touch.
All the cables you'd really need are included, with only PCIe cables sitting at a slightly small total of four. They're nicely modular, and have plenty of length to stretch across most gaps in a system. We threw together a testrig composed of two GTX480 cards and an Intel Core i7 965, running two instances of MSI's Kombustor as well as OCCT to stress the PSU, and the performance was surprising.
The 5V rail barely dipped by 0.001v when under load, from an idle of 5.148v, while the 12V rail became slightly more enthusiastic and reached a load of 12.104v, up from 12.055v. This unit hardly wavered under high stress, and performed admirably through anything we threw at it. Considering the reasonable asking price and very high performance, this is one unit that won't let you down.
Issue: 133 | February, 2012