Thermaltake Toughpower Grand Series RGB 650w PSU Review

A Closer Look

The Thermaltake Toughpower Grand Series RGB power supply has some excellent aesthetics. Particularly if you’re of the opinion that in a system build, generally the power supply is usually the most boring looking component in the system. With the big fan on top though and bold branding to the side, this certainly stands out a little from the pack.

The fan to the top is a little larger than you would usually expect to see in a PSU. That is, however, all to incorporate the RGB lighting effects which is one of the main key features for this power supply. Given this though, the vent itself is unusually large which might restrict some of that RGB really being seen to its full potential.

The backplate is nice and large with the design allowing for the best airflow possible. A key factor given that this power supply is designed with a ‘smart fan’. As such, with a lot of passive running planned, a decent airflow is going to be an important factor here in terms of meeting this requirement.

As this is a fully modular power supply you have the option to only install the cables you need. With this, the inputs to the power supply are nicely spaced out and are each clearly labelled to ensure you get the right things in the right place. There is even a little colour coding for the PCI-E ports which is a nice touch.

Ultra Quiet Smart Zero Fan

While the branding of this fan might sound fancy, what it means in simple terms is that by the use of its hybrid mode, the fan is only designed to run, if wished, when needed. This is perhaps a little contradictory to the RGB lighting factor which clearly works at its best when the fan is operational. This is, however, designed to only operate the fan when needed. As such, the proxy intention is that this should keep overall system noise levels as minimal as possible.

It can often be difficult to put into words how effective RGB lighting really is. Given that this power supply is designed for the fan to sit on top (facing into) the system a strong performance could actually be gained from this. While it does not have RGB sync compatibility, it does have 5 lighting modes (4 solid and 1 rotational with around 256 colours). We have put together a brief video to show the lighting effects at work.

Interior

All components within the interior are nicely spaced out. This is always an essential feature to a power supply when they have passive cooling options. It is, after all, easier to keep things cool is they are all nicely spaced out.

As can be seen in more detail below, the components of the power supply are well distributed and overall, it looks very professionally put together. There is no excessive blobs of seal for any of the capacitors and the heat sinks are sensibly located bang in the centre offering the best passive cooling and access to the fan.

As this is marketed as having all Japanese capacitors, we took an even closer look to confirm this. This particular power supply has a Rubycon 400v/560uf rated capacitor which is indeed a well-known Japenese brand who specialise in electronics and more specifically capacitor design. Although we couldn’t quite get in close enough to see the bank of smaller capacitors, these also appear to be Rubycon manufactured.

Important – Please Read

To understand the results on the new few pages, please take the time to read our detailed testing methodology page. The next page of this review will help you understand what the results of our testing mean, and educate you on the various qualities we look for in a good PSU.