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Thermaltake is a company that makes all kinds of PC accessories, ranging from CPU coolers to cases, and of course, power supplies. The Purepower TWV – which stands for Total Watts Viewer – is a 500W PSU. It is fully modular, although there are still some wires attached, but more on those later.

The Purepower is the most feature-packed PSU on test as it comes with an LCD equipped fan controller designed to sit in a 5.25in bay and also a 120mm case fan. You attach the fan controller to both the PSU and the case fan – hence the three wires connected to the PSU – enabling you to adjust the speed of both the PSU fan and the rear fan via two knobs.

However, slowing down the fan in your PSU too much might actually cause it to malfunction, so this is a feature we’re rather wary about. The fan controller also seems to offer very little speed variation going from slow to fast with very little in between. One of the wires from the PSU connects to a small LCD display between the two knobs, which is the Total Watts Viewer. This is similar to the analogue meter on the Cooler Master PSU, but as this one is digital it gives a very precise readout.

The problem is that the readout is way off the actual output of the PSU and it gets worse the more load is applied to the PSU. At 25 per cent load the discrepancy is about 30W below actual load, while at 75 per cent load it is 60W. It also fluctuates quite a lot, even on a completely solid load. I see it as a cool gimmick but nothing more, as it doesn’t have any real value as a measurement tool.

There are plenty of cables provided. The ATX power cable supports both 20 and 24-pin connectors but in contrast to all the other PSUs on test, the extra four pins don’t attach to the main connector in any way. It still works, but it’s not ideal, especially as the cables were slightly shorter for the side connector on our review sample. It’s also very hard to fit in the connector on the PSU.

The rest of the cables in the box are comprised by a four pin +12V, three with Molex connectors – nine headers as well as two floppy connectors – two SATA power cables, with two power connectors each and support for 3.3V SATA devices. Finally there are two PCI Express graphics card connectors for SLI/Crossfire systems.

The test results of the Purepower compared well against most of the PSUs on test. It passed the stress test and the 1.5kV Hi-POT test without any problems. The PFC isn’t as good as we expected from a PSU with active PFC, but this is not a major issue.

At £69.33 the Thermaltake Purepower is affordable and capable, but not our first choice when it comes to modular power supplies.

Verdict

The Thermaltake Purepower is not without flaws, but there were no problems with it performance and the price isn’t too bad either.

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