Rated 
Thermaltake Ups the Ante with Fairly Quiet 750 Watts !
Quiet, massive power, SLI ready, quad +12v rails, all black cable sheathing with quick connects, adjustable rails, fully ATX 2.2 compliant and three year warranty
None really, Power cables may be a bit long (best suited for full tower cases)but this is a minor gripe, Newer models with even more features are now available
Posted Jan 6, 2008 - (Jan 6th, 2008) As everyone knows, new tech items are always coming out and I am now recommending the Thermaltake Toughpower 850, 1000 or 1200 watt model instead of the Toughpower 750 watt model. This review will not be updated any longer. (Written Sept 9th, 2007) After putting the Thermaltake Toughpower 750 watt power supply through thirteen months of heavy load, I can say that it is holding up just fine. True to its name, you get 750 watts at 50 degrees C (which is damn excellent). This is distributed over four +12 volt rails (which means you do not run into the power failures common in ATX 2.0 (pre 2005) power supplies)of 18 amps each. To its great credit, the Toughpower 750 is cooled by one large 140mm fan mounted in the top (and not with a 80mm fan on the rear like so many PSUs where the noise is then quite noticeable), and this allows for almost silent operation while under 250 watts of load (less than 30 dBa usually). However,this PSU does have one minor flaw; above about 250-300 watts and the plastic sheet insert used to divert airflow inside the power supply starts to vibrate annoyingly as the fan speeds up. The solution is to break open the power supply and remove it. Without this fix the PSU will whine loudly above 500 watts of load (this is why I am dropping the rating from five to four stars). The outside finish is a highly polished steel black and all the cables are sheathed (yes, all the cables are sheathed all the way to the connectors !) in black mesh with the wonderful quick connects (no more cussing and yanking on the molex connectors) to aid in case appearance and maintenance. You also get eight 4 pin molex, one 24 pin motherboard, one 4/8 pin auxillary motheboard, 6 SATA, 2 floppy and most importantly two PCI Express video card power connectors (this allows you to run SLI (two video graphics cards that work in tandem)). The Toughpower 750 will easily power an SLI motherboard, Core 2 Duo or AMD FX-62, 4 hard drives, two optical DVD burners, X-Fi sound card, front fan controllers, two Nvidia 8800 GTX graphics cards and a water cooling pump. This model is also certified by Nvidia if you plan to run Quad SLI. The advanced tweaker can even remove the lid and tweak each individual voltage rail. And if anything ever gives out you have the three year no questions asked warranty of Thermaltake to back you up. After researching the PC Power and Cooling SLI 510, 750 Silencer, 850 and 1000 watt, Enermax Galaxy 850 and 1000 watt Galaxy DXX, Tagan 1100 watt, OCZ GamerXStream 700, 850 and 1010 watt, Seasonic 600 and 700 watt, Silverstone 750, 850 and 1000 watt, Antec TruePower 650 watt and Ultra 1000 and 1600 watt models, it is clear that the Thermaltake Toughpower 750 watt, stacks up very well. If you want the absolute best then look at the Thermaltake Toughpower 1200 watt. If you are not going to run SLI graphics but are still a power user or enjoy really quiet computing, then look at the Seasonic 700 or Corsair 650. If you have a nice rig now, enjoy quiet conditions and plan on adding lots of stuff in the future then consider the GamerXStream 850 or the Thermaltake Toughpower 750 (or 850/1000/1200). Both are five star winners. The Thermaltake is slightly less powerful and features a silent 140mm fan while the GamerXStream 850 will fit in smaller cases more easily. Thermaltake has also released the aforementioned Toughpower 850, 1000 and 1200 watt models with modular power cables which are even sweeter than the 750, but fall outside the financial sweetspot at $225-400. I was reticent in the past to purchase from Thermaltake because they have produced many ho-hum products that seemed like cheap Chinese junk. However, within the last three years, they have begun to offer several different high quality power supplies (like the Purepower 680 that I owned for almost 18 months) that have all been highly rated for their respective power class. Currently, the Toughpower 750 watt falls near the apex of the power supply competition (for its wattage level) as long as you remember to remove the annoying plastic insert. If you are a power user or want to run an SLI setup then this PSU will serve you well.
97% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful , unhelpful, or inappropriate?
Comment about this review
Comments - Post a comment