Thermaltake power supplies any good?

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Wich0

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 5, 2004
Messages
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I wanna get this case here. It comes with a 430w Thermaltake "Silent purepower" PS..I was wondering if the PS is any good?? I know most included PS in cases are garbage. i'm planning to put in a A64 3500+ cpu with a X800XL video card.
 
TT's are ok. A cut above the out-and-out junk that ships with most cases, but not in the league of Enermax/Fortron/Antec. They provide adequate power, but have +12V output that is lower than quality competing units of similar wattages. For systems with 8 pipe video cards and cool running 90nm AMD CPUs, they are ok. If you plan to OC or get a heavy duty 12-pipe+ video card, then sell the PSU that comes with the case for what you can get and put the funds towards a higher quality PSU.
 
What DougLite said.

TT are OK for stock. But if you want a top OCing system you would do well to look toward the better brands- OCZ, Antec, Fortron/Sparkle, Seasonic, and of course PCP&C.
 
Susquehannock said:
What DougLite said.

TT are OK for stock. But if you want a top OCing system you would do well to look toward the better brands- OCZ, Fortron/Sparkle, Seasonic, and of course PCP&C.
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so I should get an ANTEC case with one of those Antec PS included?
 
Well since you sound confused, just state the budget your willing to spend on case ps total....You can usually get a case without a power supply, I had a thermaltake and it blew up on me, but it was definitley my fault....So other than that I guess thermaltakes are fine, but if you plan on ocing...Get a Turbocool....It's made by PC Power and Cooling it's just a tad expensive but awesome warranty (3 year) and I couldn't even get this ps to blow up....Even doing what I did before on the thermaltake....
 
Unfortunately, the Antec PSUs that ship with their cases are similarly anemic. Look to Antec's TruePower series for a quality PSU from Antec. The Sonata ships with such a PSU, but many Antec cases ship with much lower quality SmartPower units.
 
I junked my TT for an Enermax .... cleaner power, quieter, and stronger ... I wouldn't put a TT in if I had any other choices. Antec PSU's are good so long as you get one of the non OEM one's.
 
DougLite said:
Unfortunately, the Antec PSUs that ship with their cases are similarly anemic. Look to Antec's TruePower series for a quality PSU from Antec. The Sonata ships with such a PSU, but many Antec cases ship with much lower quality SmartPower units.
Click to expand...

^_^ ... well said.

I agree that a case with separate PSU would be the better choice if you value performance
above all else.

PCP&C are certainly very good. Have one myself. Not everyone agrees that they are worth the cost.
But I think it's a small price to pay for top quality.

FYI - the warranty is 5 years* on Turbo Cool units 425w and above.
 
Well I really didn't want to spend more then ~$120 for case + PS..Like I said before I don't plan on overclocking much..just gonna have the athlon64 3500+ with a x800xl , one hard drive, one dvd burner.
 
< " I don't plan on overclocking much " >

Famous last words - lol
But seriously, once you get the OC bug it's hard to stop. :D

If you give a complete list of components you plan to use in the new rig I'm sure many here
would be glad to offer some advice as to which PSU would be best.
 
This is what I'm buying:

AMD A64 3500+ venice (I will run it @ stock speeds)
Epox Ep-9npa+ ultra motherboard
ATI radeon x800XL
2x512mb Crucial valueram
WD 160gb SERIAL ata II SE hard drive
NEC 3540A DVD burner

I might add on another hard drive in the near future and a sound card.
 
Yeah, Antec cases come with very small power supplies, even though they are good quality. I would go for a TT case without the psu, and then drop the cash on a 550w Antec. (I have an Antec 550, and I love it.)
 
Aye....

So what do you guys suggest for Thermaltake to improve on our power supplies?

Where are we lacking and how can we break into the big boy's league?
 
Deadpool9 said:
Yeah, Antec cases come with very small power supplies, even though they are good quality.
Click to expand...

No, SmartPower isn't that good for quality. It's better than most other bundled PSUs, but still sucks.
 
Tt Tech said:
Aye....

So what do you guys suggest for Thermaltake to improve on our power supplies?

Where are we lacking and how can we break into the big boy's league?
Click to expand...

Please take this as constructive as I offer it as such. Stop pumping up specs by adding capacity to the largely irrelevant 5v rail, tighter load regulation, better efficency, ditch the wattage read out since it doesn't work......give us something useful like an accurate voltage readout?, keep the external fan control's on the break out though(nice touch), adjustable pots on the high end units would be nice, and make them quiet. I doubt all of this could be done in one unit but they are points that would move them up in my book.
 
Just as a heads up I was going through TT's RMA system (yes you can easily do it :p ) and there were TONS of PSU rma's! ~60% of them were psu's that had bit the dust!

Just my 2 cents ;)
 
Considering Thermaltake's volume of PSU sales... I'd imagine there are tons of bad PSU. However, the sales to RMA ratio is very low. =)
 
Whoa! Where were you when I tried to contact someone from Thermaltake for my PSU reviews? ;)

BTW: I did give the TWV500 a thumbs up, but I agree with Spectre whole heartedly. Power supplies like the TWV480 have so much power on the 5V that there's little on the 12V. I ended up blowing up two of the 480W's because I was putting the SAME AMOUNT OF LOAD (knowingly considerably over-spec) as I was putting on every other 450~500W PSU in my arsenal because the capability of the 12V rail was only 18A!

Your 560W only has 22A on the 12V rail! It seems like everyone elses 500W (never mind 560W) has at least 50% more than that on that rail. 40A on the 5V rail, though.

The 680W doesn't have a very impressive combined 12V rail maximum wattage. Then how come it's a 680W? Because there's 50A on the 5V rail!

Why do I need a PSU with 50A capability on the 5V rail? Why? Someone... please... tell me....

It's like fluff. Filler. Am I supposed to get warm fuzzies from having a "560W" power suply that really only has the same "usable" amount of juice as another company's quality 400W?

Thermaltake power supplies are QUALITY units. I think the shortcomings come from execution. I realize that 80% of your customers are igrnoant and see "580W" and think they're getting something really hot shit, but when it blows up because they're running an overclocked Prescott and a pair of 7800's then it only makes Thermaltake look bad.
 
Thanks for the advice... the suggestions will be escalated. Our power supply division is trying very hard to pull our status up in the PSU league.
 
Tt Tech said:
Thanks for the advice... the suggestions will be escalated. Our power supply division is trying very hard to pull our status up in the PSU league.
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Good :) I mean your PSU's arent bad at all, they just need a little work is all. I wish all PSU's had a watt meter built into them like TT ones do.

And you guys really need to improve on support, hire more support personnel or something, because most of the e-mails I have sent in the past have gotten no reply ;)

PS. And I do realize there are lots of kiddies out there using these PSU's that have them overloaded/improperly hooked up. I realize that probably makes up a fairly large chunk of the RMA's.

Its good to see you have a Tt rep label now Tt Tech ;)
 
Thanks!

Have you been sending your requests via this form?
http://www.thermaltake.com/contact/support.asp

If not, which one have you been sending to? Because we're trying to find out where we're missing emails. If you ask a lot of the users that use the form shown above, they get responses within 24 hours (if not 10 min)
 
Yep I have used that form. This was a few months back (my problems are now solved after numerout emails :))

Oh and Tt as a heads up that form does NOT work with Mozilla Firefox, the info does not send properly. I dont know if you guys have solved this problem or if its just something that pertains to my pc, but that was the major reason that you were not getting some of my e-mails ;)

PS. Its nice actually seeing that someone from Tt actually reads these forums. There are some great recommendations here that you could possibly use to improve your products.
 
I'm browsing and testing the form using Firefox right now (I dun use IE).... It works o_O
 
I got a 420w Tt PSU a few months ago and really like it. Made my computer much more stable than my old 300w Powerman. My only complaint is that it's slightly louder than my last one, which I thought was too loud to sleep with on in my room. If there was some way to make it quieter while I sleep and still run I would be much happier. All in all, it's a good product and I got it for a great price from Newegg.com.
 
Tt Tech said:
I'm browsing and testing the form using Firefox right now (I dun use IE).... It works o_O
Click to expand...
Heh allright then, looks like it was either fixed, or its my pc :p
 
Wich0 said:
I wanna get this case here. It comes with a 430w Thermaltake "Silent purepower" PS..I was wondering if the PS is any good?? I know most included PS in cases are garbage. i'm planning to put in a A64 3500+ cpu with a X800XL video card.
Click to expand...
There are no case/PSU combos from TT that I can recommend.

The Antec case/PSU combos using the SmartPower II 500W,
True Power II 430W & True Power II 480W should all be fine for your non-SLI rig.

Rember that +12V@26A is the min recommended for non-SLI & +12V@34A is recommended for SLI.

Good Luck,
Dave
 
davidhammock200 said:
There are no case/PSU combos from TT that I can recommend.

The Antec case/PSU combos using the SmartPower II 500W,
True Power II 430W & True Power II 480W should all be fine for your non-SLI rig.

Rember that +12V@26A is the min recommended for non-SLI & +12V@34A is recommended for SLI.

Good Luck,
Dave
Click to expand...

Excellent recommendation. I too would say that decent case/PSU combos are few and far between and that the Antec w/ the SPII is an all around quality unit...

But doesn't the SPII 500W has only 25A available on the combined 12V rail?
 
jonnyGURU said:
Excellent recommendation. I too would say that decent case/PSU combos are few and far between and that the Antec w/ the SPII is an all around quality unit...

But doesn't the SPII 500W has only 25A available on the combined 12V rail?
Click to expand...
I really don't know.
I have determined it is between 24A & 30A, however these are holding up very well in "real world" systems.
 
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