Thermaltake Toughpower 1200W PSU 10 Years Later @ [H]

FrgMstr

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Thermaltake Toughpower 1200W PSU 10 Years Later

We once again take a PSU, actually two this time, that we have been using for a decade, and run those units through the HardOCP PSU Gauntlet one more time. These two units were used for testing motherboards and video cards and have been pushed hard over the years. How does usage and age impact a top-shelf Gold Award PSU from the past?

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Not too surprised they passed the torture test being Toughpowers. Not too surprised about the slack in the rails being 10 years old and being Toughpowers. :p

[H]ardOCP Thermaltake Toughpower 1200Ws: Born 2007 - Put Out to Pasture 2017

Does that mean your giving them away?? Hint hint.
 
No, these guys will be going out with a group of dead units to be recycled.

Ahhhhh...for shame, but they fulfilled their duty to the day.
Make sure you give them a good send off..like maybe blowing them up with the Sunmoon before you shitcan them and get it on video??

Edit: I know what your going to say, "I don't want to take a chance on frying the Sunmoon, just so you can get off to some [H]ardware Pr0n."
 
This is amazing. Makes me wonder how my Antec Sig 650 is doing coming up on 10 years along with the mobo.
 
How often do you replace PSU? Mine is 6 years old.


i'd say 10 years is about the norm these days..with things getting more efficient the 650-1000w psu's that a lot of us were buying back around 2005-2008 to run multi-gpu setups are still more than enough for most modern systems. i'd actually be interested to see how bad my thermaltake TP 750w v1 is after 10 years of 24/7 use with most of that time being over 60% load from running F@H.
 
Have to say whenever I build a new PC the one part I spend the most time deliberating and investigating is the PSU. The rest (CPU/MB/RAM) gets picked in around 10 minutes.
 
I still have one of these in service. Its one of the best and longest lived pieces of hardware I've ever purchased.

Mine would be 2008 era HX750, I've done 850watts for extended periods through it and it is been on 24/7 pretty much for 10 years but I have a feeling it has to be replaced whitin a few years, 10 years of abuse is too much I think but it might go for another few years haha.

Quality psu's do last that's for sure!
 
This is a very cool article. How long a PSU can last is a common question on forums and I've been wondering it myself since my kid's rig has a 6 year old PSU in it and wonder this all the time.
 
I've been running my NZXT Hale90 750W PSU for about 9 years or so now (maybe a tad longer) and I haven't had one hiccup. This thing is on almost 24/7 as well. It very rarely has any down time. It's seen so many new motherboard, case, GPU, memory, hard drive and fan changes and it keeps going like a champ. Love this PSU.
 
Still have this same badboy in operation after year 8 of mostly 24/7 operation. It's possibly why I had to lower my OC slightly near year 6 (i7 860 @4.4 to 4.1), but I'm too cheap to move on... I'll upgrade to a Ryzen 2 build next year :).
I'm just happy my foxconn socket never melted!
 
I can probably live with my modded BFG EX-1000s for a couple more years.
With multi-GPU being t*ts up, there's almost nothing that would load them near 100%.
 
Toughpower 1200 still running, rattles like a bucket of bolts because of bad bearings in the fan since I bought it (2nd return same issue). Apparently it doesn't bother me that much with the replacement fan sitting here for months. Gone through multiple SLI configs, MBs with it. Pretty Tough.
 
Heck the power supply in my sig has been going since what... 2011? That's a good service life if you ask me. Would buy corsair again.
 
@thread

I have the Toughpower 850W, purchased in 2007 and still going strong. Took a year out when the PC died and had to revert to a laptop, other than that it's been 24/7 use, It's currently powering a Ryzen 7 1700 on a B350 motherboard, with 9 hard drives and 2 SSDs. Damned thing is a tank.
 
I still have one of those video graphics only Thermaltake PSU that fits into your optical bay. It has saved me a bunch of $$$ because I used to constantly ugrade graphics cards back then. Because it is a dedicated PSU for graphics cards, I believe both main PSU and GFX PSU had much lower loads and it is why both are over 10 years old and still running pretty strong.
 
I have still in use the same PSU but the W0172 850W non-modular Model, one of the best PSU I've ever had, the PSU it's almost 12 years old and it has been tortured on all these years, I just do the periodic cleaning every 5 or 6 months, capacitor and rectifier check every same 6 months and everything it's still flawless in that unit, it's nice to remember that PSU was made before the Eco's "80 Plus" certification and still pass that certification.
 
I can probably live with my modded BFG EX-1000s for a couple more years.
Hey, I have one of those also. What a work horse! For 15 years, running several monster systems 24/7 for Folding@Home or BOINC, I've learned to always keep a high-power PSU in reserve. That is the role of my BFG EX-1000. Just a couple weeks ago it served as a stand-in for a failing PSU. Worked a charm.
 
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I bought one of these 10 years ago based on the original review. I moved it to backup duty about 4 years ago. When I had to dig it out to serve as a backup back in February, it worked for a day then one of the primary capacitors literally blew up.
 
You state that these PSUs have been (ab)used more than the average PSU. In what way? I find it hard to believe you pull more than 600W from it on a regular basis...

Furthermore the voltage regulation seems more off than I'd expect after only ten years of service.

Begs the question why to spend a small fortune on the PSU to keep it a while longer when you can spend less and replace it faster.
Seems like spending twice as much money to get "premium" instead of "average" won't get you twice the life span.
 
That was a cool read, and, it has me thinking, I might need to replace this.
 
I still have this PSU that I bought for a PC that was never built 10 years ago. Mine has not been abused at all and has been working sporadically during the last 4 years in a moderate Core i-5 PC after its own PSU failed.

I was toying with the idea of using it in my new PC (Core i9-7940X, 64GB RAM, 1080Ti) but after considering the whole budget of this build I went on and got an AX1500i that is dead quiet since its fan is off 99.9999% of the time.

I don't feel like throwing it away just because it is 10 years old but would not put it in a critical system either.
 
Cool review. I'm still using the 1000w version of this PSU in my main system with no issues. Every couple years or so I rotate it out with the Antec TruePower Quattro 1000w (also about 10 years old) in my secondary system, but both systems are generally on 24/7. I'm not sure how much longer i'm going to keep running it, but if it can handle my overclocked hex-core CPU and 3 videocards under full load then it must still be doing something right as that is still a pretty decent load.
 
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