Tagan ITZ 1300W & Thermaltake ToughPower 1200W
Performance
The test hardware consisted of an Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 running at 3.2GHz, 2GB of OCZ Flex XLC memory, Gigabyte's P35 motherboard, four Western Digital Serial ATA 2.0 hard drives, and a NVIDIA GeForce 8800GTS 640MB. Loaded up on this system was Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn. The Tagan ITZ 1300W was surprisingly unstable for being a 1300W monster unit. Considering that this test system used should draw no more than 600W. We would have expected this kiloWatt monster not to budge at all. At startup we were able to observe the 12V rail move up and down slightly while the system loaded Ubuntu. One of the times we booted up Ubuntu, the 12V rail shot up to 14V and then back down. We weren't able to reproduce this behavior, however, so we will discard this as a voltmeter error. During idle it was very stable as any power supply should be, and while gaming and running CPUBurn the 12V rail increased slightly, but remained stable during load. The fans are fairly quiet. The fans do create a low hum, but it's not bad. These are 80mm fans after all.
The Thermaltake ToughPower 1200W unit was an awesome performer. This test system was totally incapable of putting any stress on this unit. Idle and gaming voltages were practically the same and it was as stable as a rock. The only rail that managed to fluctuate was the 12V rail. It changed a mere .01V. In addition, I might add, this unit was also torture tested by accident. I accidentally had this unit sitting flat on the fan side, meaning there was almost zero airflow in the unit. CPUBurn and gaming benchmarks were running for a long while and then came back to check the voltages and found that the unit was burning hot. Fortunately, the unit just kept on going as if nothing happened. Indeed it lives up to its name. The rails were practically the same as idle. After standing the unit back up on its side, only a few minutes later it was extremely cool again. The fan is just as effective as it is quiet. Thermaltake has done a great job with the ToughPower 1200W.
