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- Date:
- Tuesday , June 09, 2009
- Author:
- Paul Johnson
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
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?
Overview
The first thing we are going to look at with the Toughpower XT 850W is its packaging, accessories, and documentation. While none of these items is a real 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 cases where a manufacturer can include useful accessories to make installation, routing and use more efficient.
The packaging of the Thermaltake Toughpower XT 850W is a bit different from what we have seen from the other members of the Toughpower line to date. The packaging for this unit is still huge like all the others, but now we get a black background and a cool looking flap to play with! The top of the flap lists the unit, a 5 year warranty (which is good to see), and an 80Plus bronze logo (which is posted at the 80Plus website). The rear of the unit has the power label, connector count, and a graph indicating the workings of the units FanDelayCool system (I am not even making that name up)! Also included is a little blurb about the new S.P.T. Indicator which users can think of as idiot lights for their power supply as they are only tell you if the unit has completely left the building already. The last point of interest here is the absence of SLI certification. A quick check of the SLIZone website does not find the Toughpower XT 850W rated for any level of SLI at the time of writing. However, the original Toughpower 850W was rated for GTX 260 SLI so I would expect this unit to make the same rating as well at some point. We do, however, find that the unit is rated for HD 4870 Crossfire at the Crossfire webpage.
As we see from the Thermaltake Toughpower XT 850W power label, the unit features a single 12v rail that has a total of 62A (or ~88% of the unit’s total possible capacity) available to it. This is combined with a 5v/3.3v possible capacity of 180W (as necessary up to the 850W capacity after subtracting the 12v load being used) which will be more than adequate for modern systems logic and RAM needs. Additionally, the Toughpower XT 850W comes equipped with 4 PCI-Express connectors (2 6 pin and 2 modified 8 pin), 8 Molex connectors, and 8 SATA connectors for all of your power distribution needs. This general arrangement should be sufficient for the majority of users and is well suited to an 850W unit such as this.
Once we open the Thermaltake Toughpower XT 850W packaging we find a rather large assortment of items including the unit itself, power cord, modular connectors in a pouch, 8-pin to 6-pin PCI-Express connector adapters, Velcro straps, rubber mounting gasket, mounting screws, manual, and warranty card. The manual is typical of Thermaltake manuals we have seen to date and is mostly complete. However, I would like to point out here that this is the first manual we have gotten that comes in at a bookish length of 100 pages! True, the manual covers 10 languages but that is still 10 pages per language. Included in that 10 pages are installation instructions, connector counts for all XT members, basic electrical specifications, and explanations of the units new features. This makes the documentation fairly complete overall but it certainly isn't the most complete we have ever seen even though it could crush a small child if it were to fall on them.