Thermaltake Smart BM3 850W Semi-Modular Power Supply Review
Peter Donnell / 8 months ago
A Closer Look – Interior
The fan is one of Thermaltake’s own, a TT-1225 120mm DC Brushless design.
This is a fairly compact PSU design, with the chassis being pretty packed full of hardware. Actually, it looks more cramped than usual, as the semi-modular design involves having the 24-pin and CPU cables being fed into the main compartment, where they’re hard-wired to the main PCB.
It looks like a good quality job though, with thick solder, and good quality colour-coded heat wrap around all the contact points. There also a number of cable ties in here, ensuring everything is kept neat and tidy.
The AC line-in looks robust, using thick gauge cables, and some small amounts of adhesive to keep cable runs in place.
The capacitors look pretty packed in here, with the 5v and 3.3v coils slotted between them and a fairly large heatsink. Actually, very large heatsinks for an 850W Bronze unit, but with the Hybrid Fan mode, these will certainly help with passive cooling too.
There’s a lot more of that rubber contact adhesive too, creating a barrier between that larger coil and the heatsink. It looks a bit messy, and it is, but it gets the job done.
The main transformer is in the middle with another heatsink below, and there’s plenty of space between the heatsinks to allow airflow to push through the PSU, and out the rear and side ventilation.
The main capacitor is pretty hefty and is a Japanese-made Nichicon unit rated at 105c.
It can deliver 820uF at 400V, so I have no doubt this will be able to push well above the rated 850W if needed, but we’ll find out in our OPP test shortly anyway.