Thermaltake Toughpower GF A3 1050W Power Supply Review

A Closer Look – Interior

Thermaltake has equipped the Snow Edition with one of its own Snow Edition fans, which looks nice.

It’s a TT-1225 fan, which is a 120mm DC brushless 12V design, which can operate from 0 RPM up to 1400 RPM with 41.6 CFM and is rated for 21 dBa, so it’s going to be pretty quiet overall.

The PSU looks pretty neat on the inside, with good clearance throughout, so airflow should be good while both passively cooling or using the fan.

However, the stock images TT use on their product page aren’t reflective of the interior of this PSU. I’m sure it’s just stock images for the features, but I would like it to be updated and more reflective. Their stock images show two main bulk capacitors, as well as additional Nichicon sub capacitors which aren’t present in this unit.

The PSU is kept nice and compact by utilising a couple of daughter boards, such as this smaller one for the 3.3v and 5v conversion, and the PFC.

Thermaltake uses a Nichicon Japanese capacitor for the main bulk capacitor.

It’s rated for 105c, 1000 uf and 400v, so it’s a pretty high-end part and should help us hit over 1000w easily on the 12v rail.

However, it’s only the bulk capacitor that’s Japanese, with the smaller capacitors coming from the Taiwanese brand Teapo, but that’s no bad thing, as Teapo are one of the best in the world outside of Japan.

There’s quite an array of them too, but the largest appear to be the 16v 2200 uF units.

The AC line In looks robust, with some very thick gauge wires and good quality soldering riding the power in, the mains switch and then some smaller cables connected to the fan control switch. There’s additional shielding and sleeving in all the right places too, so this is very nicely done overall.

All of the capacitors appear to be the same brand though, CapXon, and are the 2200 16FG 332’s. They’re packed in everywhere, including close to a heatsink, which isn’t ideal, but these are decent parts, and the overall efficiency of these components is good, so excess heat shouldn’t be too much of a problem here at least.