Date:
Tuesday , June 09, 2009
Author:
Paul Johnson
Editor:
Kyle Bennett
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Thermaltake Toughpower XT 850W Power Supply

Another entry into the 850 watt enthusiast desktop computer power supply market place, this time from a front runner the PSU business. If this unit is even up the heritage that we saw from the 1200 watt Toughpower a couple of years ago, it will still be a good unit. But is it a great PSU?

Introduction

Today Thermaltake Technology Company is back for a fifth time through our power supply testing program with its Toughpower XT 850W. As a company, Thermaltake has a rather short history being founded in just 1999, but in that short time it has grown rapidly. While Thermaltake's primary focus has been on thermal solutions, they have for some time now maintained a group of product lines dedicated to desktop computer power. The early power supplies in these lines were often manufactured by Sirtec, but with the launch of the Toughpower line almost two years ago Thermaltake took its power supply business in a new, and quite frankly better, direction. Today we are looking at a brand new product from Thermaltake's Toughpower XT line; specifically the Toughpower XT 850W (W0230RU).

Channel Well Technology (CWT) was founded and began manufacturing power supplies in 1993. Since 1993 Channel Well Technology products have shown up under various guises including Antec, Xclio, 2theMax, CWT, Thermaltake, Xigmatek, and Corsair. While most familiar to our US users from when they used to provide OEM services for Antec, CWT is one of the more complete OEM manufacturers as they have a fairly high level of vertical integration providing transformers all the way up to its well designed independently regulated SMPS. Recently however, CWT has begun stretching out and is providing OEM services for a number of brands as today’s unit demonstrates.

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Toughpower, Now with Added XT!

The Thermaltake Toughpower XT 850W is the first unit to land in our hands from Thermaltake's new Toughpower XT line. Prior to Thermaltake's launching of the original Toughpower line, its power supply products were not quite as well regarded as these are today. Being that the Toughpower was such a leap forward, it seems unlikely that the new XT units could represent the same revolution that the original Toughpower units did. This would make it more likely that the XT line will simply be an evolution of what has been a very good product line for Thermaltake. With that in mind what does Thermaltake have to say about the new Toughpower XT 850W?

Toughpower XT, the most advanced and no-compromise power suppl. Each power supply is individually tested to ensure utmost compatibility with all of today’s most advanced gaming processors such as Intel® Core™ i7 or AMD Phenom™ II series and power-hungry graphic cards from AMD or Nvidia®. Premium features such as FanDelayCool and S.P.T. Status Indicator give the users all-round control and visibility into the power supply’s performance and reliability. No matter what your critical application demands, Toughpower XT delivers an incredible breakthrough in gaming performance that is second-to-none.

As we see here the marketing information for the Toughpower XT 850W puts the new Toughpower XT units into much the same role as the older Toughpower units but with some new features. So let's move on to see what we have to look forward to when we purchase the Thermaltake Toughpower XT 850W in terms of documentation, accessories, cable count, rail layout, output characteristics, and general build quality.