![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Tuesday , March 04, 2008
- Author:
- Paul Johnson
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
PC Power & Cooling Turbo-Cool 860 Power Supply
PC Power & Cooling has been purchased by OCZ since our last review of its aging PSU infrastructure. Today PCP&C brings a new build to the table that sports an impressive feature set and hopefully that PCP&C build quality many enthusiasts love.
Overview
The first thing we are going to look at with the PC Power & Cooling Turbo-Cool 860 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.
First off the picture on the right is the picture of the box from the PC Power & Cooling website while the picture on the left is the picture of the box we did receive. Can anyone spot the difference? Given the nature of the packaging of the unit we received the only thing of substance on the packaging was the map to my house that FedEx adhered to the package, I am guessing that I have a new driver.
Now if we were to comment on the packaging that we didn’t receive with our unit we would notice that the unit is SLI certified, 80Plus certified, and has a 7 year warranty. A quick check of the SLIZone webpage finds the unit is indeed SLI Certified for 8800 Ultra while a similar search of the 80Plus website originally returned no listing for a Turbo-Cool 860 (though there was a broken listing for a Silencer 860) but this was recently corrected with a new listing for the Turbo-Cool 860w. Lastly, the warranty on the Turbo-Cool’s has been bumped recently to 7 years from 5 years and while this is still technically shorter than what one could call a lifetime warranty it is certainly a long period for PC Power & Cooling to be standing behind this product.
The power label for the Turbo-Cool 860 indicates that the unit has 64A available on the 12v rail which is good for ~89% of the unit’s possible total output. This is very helpful as most modern systems are drawing the majority of their power from the 12v rail and this will allow the PC Power & Cooling Turbo-Cool to allocate the majority of its power here if there are sufficient components to draw anywhere near this amount of power. However, this is not due to "trapped power" being released by using a single 12v rail as opposed to a proper multi12v rail design. To match this impressive 12v output the unit features a healthy dose of connectors including 2 6 pin PCI-Express connectors, 2 modified 8 pin PCI-Express connectors, 6 SATA connectors, and 8 Molex connectors.
Once we open up the box that our Turbo-Cool 860 showed up in we find the power supply, power cord, four mounting screws, and the test report. Just like last time there is no desiccant to prevent corrosion and there is no manual with our unit. From what is provided with this unit I am half tempted to check my receipt for a core charge! At this juncture with the unit I have received today, I have no idea what the unit actually is, what it is supposed to do, or if there is a warranty. On the flip side I know these units can ship with a manual as other users have reported getting small manuals with their new Turbo-Cool 860 so it seems at this point that we are once again left with a rather disappointing inconsistency in packaging and care. For a high end product this kind of continued inconsistency is really not reassuring and simply confusing. You get a test report that says the product works but the company can’t even be consistent enough to include a manual for everyone? Or can’t be bothered to use the same packaging for all the units? You have a premier product being sold at a premium price so why not treat it like one. These units are being shipped to retail not to an OEM who has completely different sets of requirements. At least provide the user with the information necessary to contact PCP&P should the consumer have issues. Given our experiences with the Turbo-Cool 1KW-SR and this unit, it seems the more things change the more they stay the same. Let’s move on and see if anything else has stayed the same.