Thermaltake Toughpower QFan 650 Watt Power Supply

Thermaltake has been offering power supplies for a couple of years now, with each revision improving upon the last.  With the Toughpower series, Thermaltake has chosen an award winning design from CWT that usually offers great voltage regution and high efficiency.  Today, we are going to take a look at the Qfan series.  This particular model is the Toughpower QFan 650 Watt and is currently the highest wattage available from the QFan series. 

-A very well packaged power supply!

Upon opening the box, you will find the manual, screws, power cable, silicone noise reduction bracket, a 8-pin PCI-e to 6-pin PCI-e adaptor and the modular cables with a carrying case.

Here are some of the main features and specifications from Thermaltake's Website:

The Power Supply:

The power supply features a matte gold/brown colored housing, which looks interesting.

A large logo is on each side of the power supply.

Looking at the top of the power supply, there is a Thermaltake label with their logo on it, the model number and a condensed specification list.  Note that there are four +12v rails each supplying up to 18 Amps, which is great for peripherals requiring more power such as a multi-core CPU and/or multiple graphics cards.

There is an large grill on the back which allows the 140mm fan to exhaust hot air, an on/off switch and AC Power Input.  This power supply does feature Active PFC, as noted by the sticker, so there is no need for a  switch to select the input voltage.  Note that the grill above the traditional honeycomb grill is for the QFan.

This power supply features the following cables:

Here are the modular connections on the power supply.  The red colored ports are for the PCI-Express power connectors.  Note the QFan ventilation slots again, they are on all four sides of the power supply.

-A 24-pin ATX power connector with removable 4 pin for backwards 20-pin compatibility.

-A 4-pin +12v  and 8-pin +12v EPS Power Connector

-1x  8-Pin PCI-Express Power Connector and 2x 6 Pin PCI Express Power Connectors.  With the adaptor, the 8-pin PCI-e connector can be converted into another 6-pin. 

-7x Molex Power Connectors

-6x Serial ATA Power Connectors

-2x Floppy Power Connectors

Cooling:

There is a 140mm fan on the bottom of this power supply.  Unique to the QFan series of Toughpower power supplies is the QFan within the power supply.  It has an almost frameless design with a special blade design as well.  Both of these features are supposed to make this power supply quiet.  During testing, at idle loads, this fan is whisper quiet, which is great for a 650 Watt power supply.  With loads, the fan slowly sped up to what I would call a medium speed, which was still pretty inaudible.

Inside the Power Supply: s

* Taking this power supply apart will void the warranty.

Inside the power supply, there are three thin silver finned heat sinks that offer large fins to cool down the voltage rectifiers. There is a large transformer in the middle and a tiny one below it.  The layout and build quality of this power supply is excellent. The Primary capacitor is Hitachi branded, while the secondary capacitors are SamXon branded.  Overall, we can see that this power supply uses a 'good' branded primary capacitor, while the secondary capacitors are of a good quality as well.  This power supply is built by Channel Well Technology, well known for their excellent PSU platforms.

The Primary capacitor is Hitachi branded.

The secondary capacitors are SamXon branded.

The unique frame of the Q-Fan

The fan inside is a Everflow/Thermaltake branded fan. It has the model number R121225BL with a maximum draw of .20 AMP.

Testing:

For this power supply, the test system consists of the following:

-Antec Nine Hundred Case

-Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Quad Core Processor @ 3.2 GHz

-ZeroTherm Nirvana 120 Heatsink

-eVGA nForce 680i SLi Motherboard

-2GB (1GB x 2) of Mushkin XP2-8500 DDRII-1066 Memory

-320GB x 4 Western Digital 16MB Cache Hard Drives

-2x nVIDIA GeForce 8800GTS (G92) Video Cards @ 715MHz Core / 1000 MHz Memory

-Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 Digital Sound Card

-Sony 16x DVD-RAM / 18x Samsung DVD-RAM Drives

-4x 120MM fans, 1x 200mm fan

-2x CCFL Lights

(Multimeter Results)

*For additional / larger pictures of the Thermaltake QFan 650 Watt, Click Here

*Voltages are at 'Max Load', running Orthos and 3DMark06 CPU Test 1 and 2 / Deep Freeze HDR test, and read with a Multi-Meter.

The results were excellent for this power supply. Everything ran fine during testing, the system was stable and performed the tests as expected.  During the tests, the fan speed varied from low to a medium speed and could not be heard over the system fans which are what I consider quiet. When the system is idle or doing simple tasks, the fan runs quietly, spins slowly and is not noticeable at all.  I was very satisfied with the noise characteristics during the testing. Installation of this power supply also went well and the silicone bracket fit on nicely, although it didn't make any difference in the noise characteristics. The carrying case for the unused cables is also a nice bonus. Overall, the Thermaltake QFan 650 Watt offers excellent performance at a decent price.  This power supply would be perfect for anyone looking to build a quad core system with multiple video cards.  At around $170, this power supply is a bit pricey for a 650 Watt power supply, but the quality makes up for some of it.  I feel that the price is tad too high and this should be offered at $120 or lower.  The five year warranty is also good.

Pros +

-Excellent/Unbeatable power output

-Quiet 140mm fan

-Five Year Warranty

-Modular Cables

-Storage case for unused modular cables

Cons -

-Pricey

Techaddicts.net would like to give this power supply an 'Editors Choice' rating.  Great Job, Thermaltake!

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