14 DAY TRIAL // Thermaltake's Toughpower line of power supplies continues to grow, obviously thriving through both its wattage range and ability to weather even the toughest system configurations and most fickle of power lines. The latest additions to the collection are collectively called Toughpower Gold Series.
Well, technically, they won't be able to handle wildly fluctuating currents. That's what UPS'es (unlimited power supplies) are for.
They will cope with everything else though, suffering no damage or wear in case of over-current, short-circuits, etc.
That, by extension, means that all the parts of a PC fueled by them will be protected from the worst of the repercussions of any such happenings.
So you only need to wonder about power failures, and those mostly lead to software glitches, if anything.
Anyway, Thermaltake has launched the Toughpower Gold Series of power supply units, which get their name from the 80 Plus Gold certification.
80 Plus Gold rating means that the PSUs are about as efficient as they can get. Sure, there are some 80 Plus Platinum PSUs out there, and some ludicrously expensive and rare 80 Plus Titanium builds, but those seldom make it outside exhibit booths and collectors' items.
That said, the Toughpower Gold Series all have modular cabling systems, which means that you get to choose exactly which cables to plug in and which to leave in the box.
They also have silent coolers, 140 mm fans that only produce 18 dB at typical load, which is less than faint leaf rustling and whispers (20 dB).
Furthermore, the Thermaltake Toughpower Gold Series all have high quality Japanese capacitors (low impedance, stable operation) and single +12V rail designs (for maximum compatibility and current strength).
Sadly, while Thermaltake did add the product pages of the Toughpower Gold Series 550W, 650W, and 750W, it didn't say what prices they had, or how soon we could expect them in stores. Probably by the end of the week, but some regions might be slower in receiving shipments than others.
Given the flat modular cables and everything we've mentioned above, including (and especially) the 87%-92% efficiency, the prices will probably be higher than those of competing 80Plus Gold PSUs, although other brands have been adopting modularity over the past few years.
Or semi-modularity, since these three new ones don't have all the cables possible to pull out. While they are also flat, the power cable for the motherboard and CPU socket are unremovable, connected directly to the PCB within.