Thermaltake Purepower Power Station 520W PSU

The Technicalities

Model	W0073
AC Input	100-240Vac
Current	8/4A
Frequency	47/63Hz
DC Output	+3.3v	+5v	+12v1	+12v2	-12v	+5vsb
Max. Load	30A	30A	15A	15A	0.3A	2.0A
Max. Power	520W

Here is where you can really see what you are buying. I would say the numbers listed here show this PSU to be about average as far as specs go when compared to other PSUs in the 500-600W category. I say this in part because the future of power-hungry video cards is upon us, and in a short amount of time, 30A on the +5v rail will soon not be enough. But for 98% of the computers out there, this PSU will work perfectly.

Testing

The test system used for this review was made up by the listed components. We used a voltmeter to measure the 3.3, 5.0, and 12.0 (1 & 2) volt rails. For the idle reading, we had the system sitting on the desktop with no other programs running. To measure the load reading, we ran two instances of Folding (for team 38296) in order to bring our Hyper-Threaded processor to full load.

• MSI Neo2-FIS2R
• Intel 2.6C
• NVIDIA 5900XT
• Sony DVD DL Burner
• 3 x Seagate 80GB SATA HDDs

Voltmeter Results	Tt 360W PSU	Tt 520W PSU
Idle 3.3V	3.43	3.37
Load 3.3V	3.42	3.37
Idle 5.0V	5.14	5.08
Load 5.0V	5.17	5.08
Idle 12.0V 1	12.07	12.11
Load 12.0V 1	11.91	12.05
Idle 12.0V 2	N/A	12.10
Load 12.0V 2	N/A	12.01

As you can see, the voltage rails on the Thermaltake 520W PSU are much more stable at load than the Thermaltake 360W PSU. Look specifically at the way the voltage dropped to 11.91 on the 12V rail on the 360W PSU and the voltage did not drop below 12V on the 520W PSU for either rail. This is a sign that our test system was pushing the 360W PSU to its limits and it was definitely time to retire it!