Greetings once again, loyal readers. As you can see by the above picture, I'm taking on another power supply for review today. This time, it's Thermaltake's brand new Toughpower XT, a line of units featuring things like single 12V rails, 5 year warranties, and 80 Plus certification.
This particular model is the W0230RU, an 850W unit that comes in with 80 Plus Bronze certification.
* 12Vin1:
As the +12Vrails deliver the major power to many of the components in a modern PC system, it is important to ensure each +12V rail provides adequate current for the relevant components. Inadequate current in any rail or poor distribution of current among the rails may lead to serious compatibility problems. Thermaltake understands your worries of the compatibility between PSU and your system, so we implement a pure and powerful single +12V rail to provide the best compatibility for your PC.
-oh, man... where to begin. Friends, a properly designed and well built PSU is a properly designed and well built PSU, regardless of 12V rail topology. I know single 12V designs that suck lemons, and I know sextuple designs that utterly rock the house. The key is to do your homework beforehand and buy a unit appropriately sized to your hardware needs, and you will find that for the most part the unit's designers have done their job properly, whether your target PSU is single 12V or not.
* High Quality Japanese Capacitor:
Capacitors play very important roles in a power supply unit. Poor capacitors may lead to shorter life time, system instability, voltages fluctuating, and even damage the power supply unit. Toughpower XT series, built to the highest standard of quality, has implemented the high quality capacitors on the primary side and also the secondary side. All the high quality capacitors in Toughpower XT power supply units are Japanese-made and have the highest level of workmanship.
-while this is all pretty much true, they left one out here. Failing capacitors can also increase ripple and noise, because they can no longer suppress it properly. But you'd have to be running a poorly built unit with "out of the back of a white van" capacitors to worry about that much these days. Many second tier capacitor brands like Teapo and Samxon actually do pretty well in computer SMPS use ..........