Testing:
Testing the
Thermaltake Purepower Power Express 250W focused on comparing the actual values on the 12V lines in an unloaded and loaded state. Voltage measurements were taken using a Fluke 87III Multimeter and temperatures were taken using a Yokagawa Daqstation model DX112.1.
Testing was performed on the following system:
» DFI LanParty nF4 SLI-DR Motherboard
» AMD Opteron 148 water-cooled
» 2 X 7800GTX XFX graphics cards
» 2 x 512MB TCCD G. Skill LE RAM
» 1 X 36GB WD Raptor hard drive
» 3 X 200GB Seagate hard drives
» NEC 3510A DVD Burner
» Asus DVD ROM
» Full ATX case
» 4x 120mm fans
In order to properly compare this supply with other SLI capable supplies a systematic method was used. Below we will see several different supplies that have been reviewed here at BigBruin.com in the past. These supplies include the
Thermaltake Toughpower 550W, the
Enermax Noisetaker 600W (SLI version), and also the
Sintek 500 SLI 500W power supply.
All of these supplies were first tested in an unloaded condition, where the computer is left with no programs running (except Windows of course). Then for a loaded condition all of the components in the above system are maxed out by transferring documents from one drive to another, burning a DVD, and running 3DMark06 to keep the processor and video cards at full load. Below we see the results taken from the 12V rails of each power supply as recorded from the Fluke 87III Multimeter. Here we look for not only how closely the supply stays within the 12V range but also how much it differs from an unloaded state to a load state.
Another concern you may have is temperature, so I have to ask myself, does this supply change the case temperature significantly? The answer is "No". A change of less than 1 Degree Celsius was noted using a Yokagawa temperature recorder, notice that I am also using 4 x 120mm fans and the airflow in this case is very well streamlined.
