Thermaltake ToughPower 550w PSU

As with most other high end power supplies, the ToughPower's rails are all sheathed and bound at the ends with shrink wrap.  Not only does this give a very tidy look it also doesn't inhibit the air flow in your case with wires everywhere.  Still looking at the lines, take note of the Molex connector's EZ-Grip plug.  There won't be any rocking of a connectors back and forth with this puppy.  Once you have tried the EZ-Grip connectors you will understand why they are so popular. 

  

Speaking of the lines, here is a breakdown of the each rail and what's on it.

• 24-pin ATX power connector measuring 21"

• 4-pin 12v AUX power connector measuring 21"

• (2) 6-pin PCI-E type connectors measuring 21"

• (2) SATA lines with two connectors per rail measuring 28"

• (1) Molex line with three 4-pin Molex and one FDD connector measuring 23"

• (1) Molex line with four 4-pin Molex and one FDD connector measuring 44"

Most welcome here are the dual 6-pin power connectors on separate rails for true compatibility with SLI and Crossfire VGA twin card rigs.  Another welcome sight is that of having a pair of two connector SATA lines for folks with multiple drives in RAID or JBOD setups.

Performance

To measure the performance of the Thermaltake ToughPower 550w unit we plugged the unit into our test bed and put it under load for a couple of days; looking for variations in its delivery.  Below is a screen shot of SiSoft Sandra Pro 2005 Burn In module showing readings after one such six hour run. 

Test Bed

• AMD Athlon 64 4000 Processor (Clawhammer)

• Albatron K8SLI Mainboard

• Kingwin AquaStar Water Cooler

• (2) 1024gb OCZ EL Dual Channel PC4000 Gold

• Albatron GeForce 7800 GTX

• Maxtor DiamondMax 80gb SATA HDD

• Generic DVD-RW drive

• Windows XP Pro SP2

All the results seemed to be pretty stable with the exception of the CPU voltage that showed a marginal but noteworthy fluctuation over time of .08 volts.  That may not sound like much but that is right at the +/- 5% mark.  This could very well be an issue with the capacitors on the K8SLI mainboard but this fluctuation was not observed before.  We're just calling it as we see it.

To be sure our digital readings were accurate, we also tested each rail with a standard Multimeter to ensure our readings were accurate, which they were.

Conclusion

Keeping it simple is always a good plan.  Thermaltake has done this with the ToughPower 550w PSU.  Bringing features to the table that would please anyone while keeping the extras to a minimum (ergo price) Thermaltake appears to have a product on their hands that makes everyone happy from a perspective of raw power, usable features and near silent operation.  The 5% processor voltage fluctuation was within spec but just barely.  But when you get down to brass tacks, it was within spec so I'll leave it at that.  The only thing I would like to have seen but didn't on the ToughPower was modular lines but again, keeping the price down is a give and take.  All things considered, the Thermaltake ToughPower 550w PSU would make a worthy upgrade for anyone's machine and is a product we can easily recommend.

Pros

• Plenty of power

• Power lines are sleeved and have shrink wrapped ends

• Very quiet operation

• Two separate 6-pin rails for SLI/Crossfire card setups

• EZ grip Molex connectors

• Four SATA connectors

Cons

• Exact price and availability unknown at present

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