Discuss (6) -
Posted at 6:35 AM on Thursday 06/4/09 by
Ben
Hotness UNHOT
Newegg has the Thermaltake Purepower W0100RU 500W Power Supply for $60 - $20 rebate [Exp 6/20] - $5 off with coupon code EMCLTLR39 [Exp 6/10] + $0 shipping = $35 shipped after rebate. It has great customer reviews, with a low noise 12cm fan that surely keeps the decibels down.
  • 1
    CompWiz17 - Posted 7:23 am PDT 06/4/09 (4902 Posts)  Report Spam

    From the review of the Thermaltake Purepower 430watt PSU:

    Hardware Secrets wrote:

    The main problem with this power supply is that it can't deliver its labeled power. It is, in fact, a 350 W power supply.

    This same thing happens with Huntkey Green Star 450 W, but at least this power supply from Thermaltake has all its overload protection in place and won't explode like this model from Huntkey.

    If these power supplies can't deliver their labeled power couldn't we sue the manufacturer on the grounds of false advertisement? Unfortunately no, as the manufacturers can claim they use a different methodology to label their product (for example, measuring power at 25º C and stating peak power and not continuous power). We, however, think that the correct methodology should be one similar to ours (temperature between 45º C and 50º C, continuous power).

    You could buy it as if it were a 350 W unit, but when we pulled 355 W from this power supply noise level was touching the maximum admissible limit and efficiency was at 69.6%. With other load patterns the maximum efficiency we saw was 76.9%.

    Our conclusion is pretty simple: don't buy this power supply. If you are on budget and are looking for a cheap power supply on the 450 W range for your entry-level PC, Kingwin ABT-450MM is a better option.


    post continued below due to post length limit

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  • 2
    CompWiz17 - Posted 8:08 am PDT 06/4/09 (4902 Posts)  Report Spam

    As you can see, the Purepower is simply a junk power supply.

    ThermalTake has revised their purepower lineup with their PurePower RX models, but this is not one of those. This is one of the old ATX 2.0 models.

    A good alternative to this power supply would be the OCZ StealthXStream 400watt or 500watt PSU. Those StealthXStreams costs only $5-15 more, and can put out considerably more 12v power. In a modern system, the vast majority of the needed power is 12v power. So, if a power supply has more 12v power, but less total wattage, it probably has more usable power. Adding in a bunch of extra 5v or 3.3v power to make up for a lack of 12v power pushes up the total wattage, but doesn't add anything useful to the power supply.

    The Purepower only has 348watts of 12v power, which is very low for a 500watt power supply, lower than the OCZ StealthXStream 400watt PSU.

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  • 3
    jkaa034 - Posted 8:24 am PDT 06/4/09 (18 Posts)  Report Spam

    Thanks CompWiz! Not only did that save me from jumping at this but that's actually a bunch of useful info I didn't really think of when it came to PSUs.... appreciate it!

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  • 4
    Anonymous - Posted 5:35 am PDT 06/5/09 (16776936 Posts)  Report Spam

    "post continued below due to post length limit"

    Story of his life, he never shuts up.

    Thanks CompWiz! not really you suck kid.

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  • 5
    Anonymous - Posted 2:52 pm PDT 06/5/09 (16776936 Posts)  Report Spam

    I'm waiting for CompJizz to tell us how great ATI is .....AGAIN and AGAIN.....

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  • 6
    dave_c - Posted 8:03 pm PDT 06/5/09 (16750 Posts)  Report Spam

    Keep in mind that you buy an inexpensive PSU like this to avoid dealing with a rebate and for a typical system rather than an overclocked or gaming rig.

    In that case, it's not the wattage that matters much, no non-o'c and non-gaming rigs use over 220W or so. Well I left out large fileservers but the main point is you don't need to shoot for the best PSU wattage out there, to some extent it's crazy when people pay more for a 500W+ PSU when all they needed was a good 300W PSU. An all integrated HTPC or office box may not even need 150W PSU.

    What it needs is quality capacitors and fan. a 2000W PSU that dies in a year isn't as good as a 300W PSU that lasts 10.

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