Thortech Thunderbolt Plus 850W Review

Introduction Thortech are a division of the DRAM brand "GeIL" or Golden Emperor International Limited best known for making enthusiast orientated DDR3 modules. GeIL have been in the business of making consumer power supplies for only a short while, just over 3 years now and in that time they haven't really managed to gain much traction in the consumer market place despite having 15 years of experience making industrial power supplies. As I've seen with previous Thortech products the main problems are not with the product itself but the main problems derive from poor or non-existent availability which in turn leads to highly uncompetitive pricing. If you combine that with the relatively non-existent presence of Thortech as a company, and a brand, and what you end up with is an uncompetitive product in terms of pricing from an obscure brand consumers are unsure about, or just unaware of. I have no doubt today we will see a similar thing. Today we are reviewing the Thortech Thunderbolt Plus 850W power supply which is semi-modular in design, has 80 Plus Gold certification and comes with Thortech's iPower Meter. Below you can see Thortech's rather primitive specifications table but there is a more detailed set of specifications available on the next page, so let's proceed! Packaging and Contents The front of the packaging points out the key features of the product which 80 Plus Gold certification and an impressive 5 year warranty. The rear of the box has detailed specifications and cable information. Included, aside from the power supply unit and modular cables, is the iPower Meter, a quick install guide, cable management ties, four screws, four thumbscrews and a power cable which varies by region. A Closer Look - Exterior The unit is dominated by the top 135mm fan which has a Thortech sticker at the centre. The base of the unit has the usual power sticker with details about rails and amps. The side of the unit has a sticker with the same theme that we saw on the packaging. The other side offers up the same but in reverse to cater for different mounting orientations. The modular end includes a lot of connectors. Of those two of the yellow ones are not used because this unit only support four PCIe connectors. The reason it has those two extra is because it inherits the same chassis as its higher wattage siblings like the Thunderbolt 1000/1200W (Plus) units. The rear has a power switch, standard kettle lead input and hexagonal mesh for exhaust ventilation. Thortech include their iPower Meter which has the ability to measure watts, efficiency, volts, amps and change the fan mode as well as switch between Fahrenheit and Celsius when measuring internal temperatures. All the modular cables come nicely presented inside a plastic-based pouch. Modular cables are as follows: 4 x PCIe 6+2 pin on 2 cables at 580mm long each 6 x Molex 4 pin on 2 cables at 530mm+180mm+180mm long each 1 x FDD 4 pin on 1 cable at 530mm+180mm+180mm+180mm long 8 x SATA 15 pin on 2 cables at 480mm+150mm+150mm+150mm long each The fixed connectors are as follows: 1 x motherboard 20+4 pin at 530mm long 1 x EPS 12v 8 pin at 580mm long 1 x EPS 12v 4+4 pin at 580mm long 4 x SATA 15 pin at 580mm+150mm+150mm+150mm 1 x iPower Meter cable at 850mm long A Closer Look - Interior The OEM producer for the Thortech Thunderbolt Plus 850W is Sirfa/High Power. The provided fan is a 135mm Globe Fan unit with a part number RL4Z B1352512H-3M. Transient filtering starts at the AC receptacle with one X capacitor and two Y capacitors. Moving over to the second stage filtering and we find another X cap, another two Y caps, an MOV and two Ferrite coils. The two main hold-up capacitors are provided by Rubicon and are rated for 330 uF, 400V and 105 degrees celsius each. The semi-modular designs sees a large number of cables pre-fitted inside the unit allowing it to achieve that high 80 Plus Gold efficiency. A separate daughterboard provides digital controls for the fan and a connection for the iPower Meter. Test Procedure At eTeknix we take the power supply testing procedure very seriously. For all power supply reviews we used a variety of Chroma machines and other digital power machinery provided by Enermax in their European test labs. We would like to say a huge thank you to Enermax for making this power supply testing possible. The test machinery included the following: A Chroma 6314A power supply load tester with two add on 6314 modules to support up to six 12 volt rails. A Chroma Digital Power Meter Model 66202 A Custom-made Enermax PCB circuit board to connect all the appropriate power supply cables A Tektronix TDS 3014C Digital Phosphor Oscilloscope A Voltcraft DT-10L Laser Tachometer The eTeknix test procedure involves: Testing each power supply at 20/40/60/80/100% load (with balanced load across all rails) and measuring PFC (power factor correction), efficiency (actual power divided by power "pulled at the wall") and voltage regulation (deviance from expected voltages of 3.3/5/12). Measuring ripple and noise with an oscilloscope at 20/40/60/80/100% load. Measuring voltage regulation and ripple/noise at Maximum 12v loads and maximum 3.3/5v loads while keeping the -12v and 5vsb consistently at 0.1A and 1A on the rail(s) not being tested. For example under 12v crossload we would load the 12v rail to its maximum and place 0.1A on the -12v and 5vsb as well as 1A on the 3.3v and 5v rails. Measuring fan speed after a stabilisation period of five minutes at each load scenario using the Voltcraft DT-10L laser tachometer and a reflective strip on the fan. Other things to consider are that We recognise that a single yellow 12 volt cable can provide only 6 Amps before overheating (which corrupts voltage regulation and efficiency) and so we used an adequate number of cables for each power supply. Our power supply tester was capable of only 50 Amps on the 12 volt 1 rail, 50 Amps on the 12 volt 2 rail and 25 Amps on rails 3-6. This meant that for single 12 volt power supplies with rail Amps above 50 we had to split them virtually over two rails to maximise their load. There are no power supplies that we tested that have more than 50 Amps over two rails so this was only an issue for single 12 volt rail power supplies. We use the same time scale and horizontal millivolt scale on our oscilloscope for all noise and ripple tests. Deviance is the terminology used to represent the way voltages diverge from their expected values. Voltage Regulation To test voltage regulation we load the power supply to five different load scenarios that give an equal spread of load across every single rail. So that means 20% on all rails, 40% on all rails and so on. We then calculate the average deviance of each rail from its expected voltage. Power Efficiency Power efficiency is measured by calculating actual supplied wattage divided by the wattage drawn at the wall/plug, multiplied by 100 to give a percentage. We then compare that to the particular 80 Plus certification the company claims to see if it meets that. You can see the 80 Plus certifications below, we always test 230v power supplies. Power Factor Correction Power Factor Correction is the ratio of the real power flowing to the load, to the apparent power in the circuit. The aim of PFC is to make the load circuitry that is power factor corrected appear purely resistive (apparent power equal to real power). In this case, the voltage and current are in phase and the reactive power consumption is zero. The closer the number to one the better as this allows the most efficient delivery of electrical power (Source - Wikipedia). Noise and Ripple Noise and Ripple can easily be measured by an oscilloscope. These show how much voltage fluctuation there is on a particular rail. We tested the rail stability of the 3.3 volt, 5 volt and 12 volt rails using an identical time and millivolt scale for all graphs. The latest ATX 12 volt version 2.3 specifications state that ripple from peak to peak must be no higher than 50 millivolts for the 3.3 volt and 5 volt rails, while the 12 volt rail is allowed up to 120 millivolts peak to peak to stay within specifications. Load (%) 3.3V Ripple 5V Ripple 12V Ripple 20 40 60 80 100 Cross Loading Our cross loading procedure is designed to rigorously test the stability of the main two rail combinations. We push the maximum rated current and wattage through the 12 volt rail(s), and then through the 3.3 and 5 volt rails combined, and see if the power supply is capable of delivering its specification for those. However, meeting the specification is not enough, the power supply must also maintain strong voltage regulation and noise/ripple to have "passed the cross load test. The cross load test is a "worst case scenario" for the two main power delivery rail mechanisms (12v and 3.3+5v) and so the power supply will always deliver slightly lower than realistic/expected results. However, this is not necessarily a realistic test and it is just a case of pushing a power supply's rails right to their rated limits to see how well they can hold up. 12 Volt Cross Loading 5 and 3.3 Volt Cross Loading Fan Speed When testing in a power supply laboratory it is difficult to take fan noise readings as the noise from the Chroma corrupts everything. The next best thing in our circumstances was reading off the fan speed with a tachometer to get an idea for the noise. In the Enermax Europe PSU lab we had to do exactly that and we recorded the fan speed at each load scenario. The ambient temperature during testing held constant at 26 degrees, with 1 degree of variation. Each power supply had a consistent time period of 5 minutes to stabilise between each load scenario. In my experience the following general relationships apply between noise levels and fan speeds, though it can vary greatly between the type of fan used. Below 800 RPM - Inaudible/Silent 800 to 1000 RPM - Barely audible 1000 - 1200 RPM - Audible but still quiet 1200 - 1400 RPM - Moderately noisy 1400 - 1800 RPM - Noisy 1800 RPM or higher - Intolerable Final Thoughts Pricing The Thortech Thunderbolt Plus 850W has an MSRP of $170-200 USD., that's a UK street price of about £130-150. As always the product is like trying to find a needle in a haystack and is out of stock at every major retailer I checked with. Conclusion The Thortech Thunderbolt Plus 850W power supply is similar to other Thortech units we've tested in terms of performance. As a high performance power supply unit it has everything you could need - solid voltage regulation, excellent efficiency, reasonably quiet operation, very good ripple suppression and a (semi)modular design for easy cable management. Our results do not need to be explained more than that because this power supply is just a good solid performer. The only part of its performance that was feeble was the PFC but that isn't a deal breaker for most people, though it still represents an area of potential improvement for Thortech. Moving away from performance let's address a few other things. Firstly - the price. The price is simply uncompetitive. You can pick up 80 Plus Gold 850W units for as low as £100, much lower than the £130-150 Thortech's Thunderbolt 850W Plus costs. There are a lot of other more premium units from reputable brands selling in the £110-150 area - such as units from Enermax, Corsair, NZXT, Seasonic and so on. Sure the Thortech Thunderbolt Plus 850W offers up the nifty iPower Meter device but does that warrant the extra over other brands? I think not. Thortech offer a Thunderbolt 850W which ditches the iPower Meter to be slightly cheaper but again availability on that unit is non-existent and pricing is almost on parity with the MSRP of the Plus model when stock can actually be found. We think if Thortech ever want to make an impact on the market they need to get their pricing down to competitive levels and ensure stock is maintained. So again I'm lead to a similar conclusion as other Thortech products - the product is good but the price isn't. And it isn't just the price but the whole brand experience - no one knows if Thortech are even still an operational, the brand has a pitiful presence and market reputation, I've also heard my fair share of horror stories about people not being able to access any warranty support for the supposed 5 year warranty Thortech offer on these PSUs. As far as I can tell Thortech still operate, their website is still online and they still post on their Facebook page. I would be cautious about buying one of these units unless you can pick it up for a bargain or know how to repair it yourself if something goes wrong. Pros High efficiency Reasonably quiet operation Good ripple suppression 5 year warranty (if honoured...) Good selection of cables and connectors with long lengths Cons Poor PFC Not the best sleeving in terms of quality or aesthetics Uncompetitive pricing Pitiful brand presence of Thortech "The Thortech Thunderbolt Plus 850W power supply delivers a glimpse of what Thortech can offer. The spark of promise shown by the quality and performance of the product is quickly extinguished by the lacklustre pricing, MIA nature of the Thortech brand and total absence of stock at any major retailers. " Thank you to Thortech for providing this review sample.

Packaging and Contents

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