Internal Inspection:
Now for the fun part, voiding the warranty, one of the luxuries we have as reviewers. What good would a review be without seeing what makes a product tick? Oh, and don't try this at home. Removing the four screws from the top and cutting through the QC sticker reveals a large white piece of plastic covering all the goodies.
Lifting the plastic cover reveals some large heatsinks, a capacitor and several other smaller components. One of the things that jumped out to me right away was the size of the fan; a penny was used to put it into perspective, a quarter would have normally been used here but they don't pay me to do these reviews.
Just a few more things before we put this in the computer for testing. A 24pin adapter is to be used in order to connect the supply to the motherboard. Below we see this connector with a set of wires that spit off the side, one thing that bothered me about this connector was an exposed piece of metal that sticks out of the connector. This may or may not be a big deal to some, but if you have ever had a short in one of your computers it may seem like a huge deal. It is easily removed with a small pair of needle nose pliers, if you feel this is necessary.
Installation:
Installation is as simple as it gets, even if you do get stuck at this point,
Thermaltake thought of everything and included a very well illustrated instruction manual with the supply. In fact, installation was so simple that only one thing stood out to me. There is no screw included to attach the PCI slot power adapter to the PCI slot. I must have dozens of them lying around, but if I didn't it may have put a damper on things.
The final product is shown below. On the left is a picture of the front of the Power Express 250W fitting nicely into one of the drive bays. On the right we see the LEDs light up when the supply is under load.
The next image is from the inside of the case, showing the 24 pin connector front and center. Although the rest of the cables are wrapped nicely this one sticks out like a sore thumb. On the right we see the backside of the case and the AC power cord connected through the PCI slot.
