Thermaltake Toughpower iRGB PLUS 1000w PSU Review
Mike Sanders / 5 years ago
A Closer Look
The Thermaltake Toughpower iRGB PLUS seems to carry all of the ‘professional’ aspects seen on the box work into its design. You are not, initially, blown away by anything in particular. It looks, simply, like a strong and solid power supply. Being Thermaltake, however, there is more to it than that!
The power supply does, of course, carry more than a little branding on it. What is there, however, is nice, crisp and understated. If anything, as can be seen on the vents to the side panel, compromises in their own branding have been made to ensure that this can run as optimally as possible.
That doesn’t, of course, mean to say that they don’t occasionally like to remind you whose product this is. There is, as you might expect, a nice solid bit of branding to the centre of the fan.
The rear of the power supply has some nice large vents which practically covers the entire panel. This should allow for a nice passive airflow.
Unlike many other RGB power supplies from Thermaltake, there is no manual control button. Remember, however, that this primarily operates via apps such as Razer Chroma, Amazon Alexa or their own desktop software.
Connections!
The modular power inputs are very well presented with ease of access being achieved with a ‘back to back’ style design. This allows for much easier than usual insertion and removal. A nice option if you’re regularly adding and removing them!
Finally, on the base of the power supply, you are given some impressively detailed specifications on the power supply. Specifically, the power output on each individual rail. This isn’t entirely necessary. Generally, because it will go over the heads of many. For someone like us who regularly deals with power supply details all the time, however, it’s great to see it there!
Cabling
You are given, pretty much, all the cables a PC could require via their modular design. The cables themselves have a nice flexible feel while also being more than long enough to reach all the components of your system.
Whether you take cable management seriously or not, Thermaltake has you covered to ensure everything will hook up nice and neatly!
Internals
As the Thermaltake Toughpower iRGB PLUS is a somewhat premium model, we have already seen a few indications to suggest that very little ground (f any) has been given to compromise the design. As such, internally, we were expecting to be impressed and, put simply, we were not disappointed!
Taking a closer look at the internet design of the power supply, we’re immediately impressed with just how clean, tidy and organised it is. Remember that this is a 1000w power supply and as such, clearly has a lot of work to do. It becomes evidence pretty early on, however, that this has been designed to run as efficiently and cool as possible.
While there are a few visible instances of glue (likely for anti-vibration) these have been very neatly done. In addition, only seemingly where absolutely necessary.
Promising all Japanese capacitors, Thermaltake was found to not be fibbing in that regard. The two main capacitors are both produced by Chemi-Con, a well known and highly-reputable Japanese company. In addition to this, being rated to 105C means that they are, pretty much, as good as you can get!
The man itself is more than a little unusual based on previous designs we have seen from Thermaltake. It does, however, appear that this may represent the first time in which they have taken their highly popular ‘Riing’ technology and incorporated it into a power supply. As such, expect bright lights and high-levels of performence!
Control At Your Finger Tips… Or Mouth!
As we noted above, this power supply is, perhaps, one of the most advanced currently on the market. While Thermaltake may have pioneered RGB lighting on their PSU designs, they have also been the first to directly look to tie in control with various popular applications.
Through the simple adding of ‘skills’, the Thermaltake Toughpower iRGB PLUS is both compatible with Razer Chroma and Amazon Alexa. The latter even allows you to control the power supply via voice command! This is a technology that, to my knowledge, Thermaltake is exclusively pushing!
If this is, however, all a bit too technologically advanced for you, their own desktop application is fantastic!