Toughpower power supply series is around for a while now and Thermaltake has just added two new models to this series: 700 W (W0295RU) and 800 W (W0296RU). These two models are 80 Plus Silver certified, promising an efficiency of at least 88% at typical load (i.e. 50% load), using an internal project totally different from other power supplies from the same series. In fact, these two models are manufactured by a different company, FSP, while other Toughpower models are manufactured by CWT. This is the first 800 W power supply from Thermaltake, but you have to pay attention because they now have two 700 W models on the same series, with the “old” model (W0105RU) presenting lower efficiency than the new one (W0295RU).
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Figure 1: Thermaltake Toughpower 800 W power supply.
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Figure 2: Thermaltake Toughpower 800 W power supply.
Toughpower 800 W is a somewhat long power supply, being is 7” (17.5 cm) deep, having a 135-mm fan on its bottom, active PFC and no modular cabling system. Usually power supplies from the Toughpower series are available in two versions, “Standard”, with no modular cabling system, and “Cable management”, with modular cabling system. This time, however, the new 700 W and 800 W models don’t have “cable management” counterparts.
All cables have a nylon protection. The cables included on Toughpower 800 W are:
- Main motherboard cable with a 20/24-pin connector.
- One EPS12V cable.
- One ATX12V cable.
- Two cables with one six-pin auxiliary power connector and one eight-pin auxiliary power connector for video cards.
- Two SATA power cables with three plugs each.
- One peripheral power cable with two standard peripheral power plugs and one floppy disk drive power connector.
- One peripheral power cable with three standard peripheral power plugs.
The cables are somewhat short, having 18 ½” (47 cm) between the power supply housing and the first connector on the cable and 5 ½” (14 cm) between connectors, on cables with more than one connector. The length of the cables may make it difficult for you to use this power supply inside a full tower case or even on a mid-tower case where the power supply is installed on the bottom of the case.
We were disappointed by the cable configuration from this power supply, especially on the video card cables. Not only it has two video card power connectors sharing the same cable (the recommended configuration is having each video card power connector attached to an individual cable) but two of the connectors are eight-pin models without the option to convert them into six-pin models. This makes it impossible to install two high-end video cards that require two six-pin power connectors each under SLI or CrossFire mode (e.g. GeForce GTX 260 and GeForce GTX 285) – this installation is possible only by using adaptors to convert peripheral power plugs into six-pin video card power connectors.
The number of peripheral (five) and SATA (six) power connectors is also below what we would expect on a 800 W product, which is clearly targeted to users running two video cards and several hard drives.
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Figure 3: Cables.
Almost all wires are 16 AWG, i.e. thicker than normal. This is great to see. The only wires that are 18 AWG are the +5 V ones on the main motherboard cable and the wires used on the peripheral and SATA power cables.
Let’s now take an in-depth look inside this power supply.
