Thermaltake Toughpower Modular 750W PSU

Rob Williams

Rob Williams

Editor-in-Chief
Staff member
Moderator
Power, we all need it, we all crave it and it's a part of life. Today I'm looking at an item that'll have you sounding like He-Man: "I have the power!" And you won't be wrong.

Read Matts review here and discuss it here.
 
D

day0

Obliviot
Continuous wattage of 750W.
Click to expand...

I'm not terribly familiar with what that means in the review. Is that like having a 750W light bulb on when my computer is on?

PS. I just signed up. Great site!
 
madmat

madmat

Soup Nazi
It means that the PSU is capable of pushing up to 750W non-stop and be within spec. It's only going to use (and put out) as much wattage as your PC needs at any given time. If it needs 200W it'll put out that much and use about 240W given 80% efficiency.

Thanks for joining up BTW. nice to meetcha.
 
Greg King

Greg King

I just kinda show up...
Staff member
Assuming you are who your name suggests, thats means a lot! While I am not Matt, thank you for the compliment.
 
U

Unregistered

Guest
I noticed something strange in your review, why is half of the fan covered with a transparent plastic? That thing there sure is getting in the way of our nice airflow. why did they put it there? I am wondering whether I have to remove it or not.
 
madmat

madmat

Soup Nazi
That's there to force the air flow to act more like a fan laid out in a linear fashion from front to back. It deflects the air causing it to flow from the front of the PSU to the back. If you had a cut-away of the PSU looking at it from the side you'd see that the opening in the fan is in the front, the air flows from the fan down to the front of the PSU, down and then back thereby making for better air flow over and through the components in the unit. If taken out the air will dump straight out the rear of the PSU and actually cause it to run hotter.

It's like ducting for directed air flow so you want to leave it in place.
 
U

Unregistered

Guest
dublin sean

Excellent easy to understand review, has helped me to finally make up my mind
 
U

Unregistered

Guest
how many ide molex connectors?

Does anyone know exactly how many modular ide power cables this comes with? I suspect it comes with 4 IDE power cables with two molex connectors per cable. Is this correct?

How safe would it be to expand this to 16 connectors by use of a y splitter on each of the default connectors?
 
madmat

madmat

Soup Nazi
For 16 drives? Not very since that's a grand total of 3A X 16 upon drive spin up and the IDE's all ride the same rail rated at 18A. If you're wanting to power relatively low draw items such as CCFL's and such it would be OK as long as you don't go overboard.

Also, if you have your drives set to stagger spin up (via the drive controller cards) it would likewise be OK as the drives only consume a minimal amount of power once they're all spinning.
 
C

ctrlshift

Obliviot
Ahh right, I guess that explains why my PSUs keep dying. Is there anything out there that can do what I want? If not what is the maximum?

I doubt my controller cards have stagger spin, but I will definitely look into that
 
madmat

madmat

Soup Nazi
To find out access the controllers during bootup (during POST) and see what options they do offer. If not you'll need a PSU with a single 12V rail of considerable size. A minimum of 60A I'd think would be sufficient. You might look into an Ultra X3 1KW for $300 or a PCP&C silencer 750W Quad although it's fairly noisy (yeah, the silencer is noisy...go figure but it is considerably quieter than the TurboCool) under heavy load.
 
C

ctrlshift

Obliviot
Apparently Enermax Liberty PSUs can deliver 22A to the the 12V rails. Awesome! I think this is probably as good as I'll get.
 
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B

Ben

Guest
I have the brother of the PSU reviewed here, the Thermaltake Toughpower 600W on my computer. Is there anyway to measure how much watts my computer is sucking out of my home's wall socket? Is there any software that gives this info that I can install?
 
Rory Buszka

Rory Buszka

Partition Master
Unfortunately, there's no software you can install. In fact, any monitoring of power supply operation is motherboard-based, so it can only analyze the voltage coming out of the power supply and into your PC -- it can't actually see the other 'side' of the power supply, where AC voltage comes in. However, there is a handy gadget that you can buy, called the Kill-A-Watt, by P3 International. It's widely available, and Seasonic even has something similar called the Power Angel.

Kill-A-Watt: http://www.p3international.com/products/special/P4400/P4400-CE.html
 
O

OblivioN_

Guest
Forgotten

hi MadMat!

im mounting a future sli system ( but one gfx at the time ^^ )

i heard that some people use 2 psu (freaky!!) the excuse they gave was most power is used by the mobo and the rest goes for the gfx and sound cards..etc..

they want to be top gamers :D

so they divide.. one psu for mobo and cooling system and the other one for gfx and sound cards ( per exemple^^)

Is it really necessary 2 psu in a top system? is it better in any way? is all that power necessary at all? ( bet many many people has this doubt)

i know gfx cards nowdays are very "powerhungry"!

i was thinking in one good ( sli ready) psu of 500 to 550 W!

is it enought for the hole system? for 2x Ge Force 8800GTX ( or higher future gfx) per exemple?

i'm not thinking of buying 2 psu thats wasting alot of power.. im my opinion!

i really need some more expert feedback before buying so any good advise is welcome! thanks!
 
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