Purepower Express 250W

[Kougar]

Reviewer: Björn "SwedBear" Endre

Date Published: April 2, 2007

Excerpt: "To help take care of the increased need for power, Thermaltake has released a separate PSU intended just for your video cards. In our review we test it to see if it is worth the money or if you better spend it on a new PSU. "


http://www.bjorn3d.com/Material/revimages/psu/purepowerexpress/system.jpg

Please feel free to post your comments and questions here!

Link To Review (http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=1072)

[DragonMaster]

At a price around $45 it is quite cheap
Nice!

Is a GF8 only using 80 watts?

[tomato]

Wow, I just might be intertested in picking up one of these... especially at that price point and those results! ;)

[Victor]

Nice!

Is a GF8 only using 80 watts?

It depends on which card you are talking about. I don't think there's any official number but I think the 8800GTX uses at least 125W or so.

[Kougar]

That sounds about right to me, Victor. With a 7950GT I was drawing ~200watts... replaced with a 8800GTS and am now drawing 309watts from the wall without the monitor/speakers. I rounded down to 100watts extra, just for my vid card.

Bjorn is the reviewer though, and his numbers looked a bit lower compared to mine, so ya might wait for his reply to your question.

[SwedBear]

Well, doesnt the card also draw some power over the PCI-E slot?

What i basically did was measure the W with one of those Power consumption measurement thingys you can buy. I put it between my PSU and the wall and plugged the computer in there.

So not using the purepower express I measured a power consumption which peaked at around 310W when I ran 3dmark06 at 1920x1200.

I then hooked up the Purepower but let it draw the power from another wall-main. So its power-consumption wasn't included in the total measurement.

And at that point I got a max W at around 80w less. However, the Sparkle 8800 also gets some power from a Molex connector (for the TEC cooler I guess) plus I gather a bit from the PCI-E slot and the power used there is not deducted from the total so the 80W should not be the total power the 8800GTX needs.

I've been hunting high and low a better more expensive power consumption measurement device that can plot the W-usage over time but so far not found any.

/B

[DragonMaster]

I thought new cards were eating more power than that.

[werty316]

Load I think the 8800GTX sucks around 146W alone,... I think.

[sushrukh]

Nice review & an affordable nice add-on to our existing PSUs.This will certainly increase the life of our main PSU.

I thought new cards were eating more power than that.

Let the R600 come.It'll take more load from this than the G80s for sure.

[Pat123]

U reckon one of those will support an r600 isnt the rumoured power consumtion like 270w ??

[SwedBear]

Hard to tell. Remember that each time a new card is released there is a lot of rumours which suggest you need a monster PSU to drive them and so far it has never been true.

I actually take for granted that the cards will be able to run with "just" 250W but I will soon know when I get my hands on a reference board.

/B

[Kougar]

U reckon one of those will support an r600 isnt the rumoured power consumtion like 270w ??

So far, it is only a rumor (Even thought extremely likely to be at least 200watts for the highest model card IMO). Even so, as SwedBear has already said the graphics card gets a fair amount of power from the PCIe slot. So using the PurePower Express in conjunction with a strong PSU for the system would still be fine, especially depending on which PCIe connectors you use from which PSUs. :icon_tiphat:

[sushrukh]

Yep, i think the Purepower can handle R600.Donno about Crossfire though.I'm sure they will release a higher powered Purepower system if they think that the new cards may take more power from this 250W PSU.

[SwedBear]

Well, since this only has two PCI-E power connectors R600 Crossfier is out of the question anyway :). I can handle one of the cards but not two.

/B

[sushrukh]

Sorry, Swedbear i didn't notice that this has only 2 power connectors.Thanks.

[Victor]

even if it can power the r600, the connector might not work as the r600 is rumored to use new 8pin pcie connector.

[Kougar]

Lastest released info I would put my own money on indicates a 150W–230W power draw from a single R600, which is realistic.

[SwedBear]

even if it can power the r600, the connector might not work as the r600 is rumored to use new 8pin pcie connector.

Well, the rumour is that the R600 will stilla ceept the 6-pin connector but requier the 8-pin if you want to overclock. Considering how few PSU's have 8-pin connectors it might not be the best move to requier it in the beginning.

[DragonMaster]

We'll use one Purepower per card or what?

[sushrukh]

We'll use one Purepower per card or what?

I don't think that will be needed.Purepower has just launched with 1 card capability but it'll launch another model with greater capacity for sure, like the Purepower 350/400 or 500.

[Pat123]

I might have to get my hands on one, seems like agood idea. With my next gfx card purchase most likely second generation dx10 cards this should provide stable power without me having buy a new beefier psu.

[Unregistered]

You reviewed the power supply for nvidia cards, thermal take also has the same product for crossfire cards that includes the 8 pin adapter and everything needed, they have 2 separate products one for ATI and one for nvidia.