Thermaltake Toughpower Grand RGB 850W Power Supply Review

When it comes to choosing a new power supply, there is a tonne of choice currently available from various vendors, but how many have integrated RGB LEDs and how many are all supported by ASUS Aura Sync, MSI Mystic Light and GIGABYTE’s RGB Fusion RGB technologies? Not many, but the model we have in for review to today does which is the Thermaltake Toughpower Grand RGB 850 watt power supply.

The Toughpower Grand RGB 850W power supply has many different features which include an RGB Thermaltake Riing 14 RGB fan to keep the power supply cool, which also has a smart zero mode for minimal noise. The unit also has low profile cabling for easy cable management and cable routing, as well as an attractive and fully-modular design. Let’s take a look at the official specifications and take a look at the unit a little closer…

Thermaltake Toughpower Grand RGB 850w Specifications & Features

Thermaltake Toughpower Grand RGB 850w Closer Look

Thermaltake is well known for their design choices and the fact they integrate RGB into the vast majority of their product range is something most people are quite happy with, well the general consensus on social media that I have seen says this. The Toughpower Grand RGB 850w PSU is all-black in colour and includes pretty RGB branding around the panels including the two sides and the top panel.

Click on an image to enlarge

On the top panel is a large vented panel with a single 14cm Thermaltake Riing RGB fan there to provide the cooling support. The venting looks nice and I personally prefer it to the usual honeycombed design that most PSU manufacturers use.

The cables that come included with this are low profile which means they should be easier to route around your PC case. The Thermaltake Grand RGB 850W features a fully modular design and as such, has a full set of modular cables which include the following:

• 2 x 4+4-pin CPU +12V (EPS)
• 4 x 4-pin Molex
• 6 x 6+2-pin PCIe
• 1 x FDD Power
• 12 x SATA

On the rear panel is a power switch, a DC power input and a switch to enable the Smart Zero Fan feature on the power supply itself. This allows you to either have the fan spinning at all times, or only when it needs to be running, etc when you’re drawing lots of power from the wall and the components are starting to heat up. The other added feature is an RGB lighting switch which means you can switch the LED off or select between a solid red, green, blue and white colour. A 256 colour RGB cycle can also be accessed too. The power supply is fully compatible with ASUS Aura sync, MSI’s Mystic Light and GIGABYTE’s RGB fusion which is fantastic if you’re looking to sync this power supply with the rest of your components.

Below is a short RGB video demonstration:

The Thermaltake Toughpower Grand RGB 850w Review: Performance and The Verdict

Since we don’t currently have access to an ATE load tester, a multimeter is used to show each of the power supplies performance on the 3.3v, 5v, and 12v rails. Although we can’t do full load tests, we can provide relative information regarding variance and fluctuation of current and ripple on the rails which is integral and indicative of quality in a power supply.

To perform the above tests, the components and methodology will be as follows:

Intel Core i7-7820X @ Stock
ASUS X299 TUF Mark 1
ZOTAC GTX 1060 – Power limit set to the maximum
Crucial (2x8gb) 32GB DDR4 Ballistix Elite 3000MHz
1 x 525GB Crucial MX300 SSDs

Voltages will be monitored via a multimeter and the AC power draw will be monitored via a power monitor when drawn from the wall. For the idle test, the system will be simply booted up and let to run into windows and after 5 minutes when the power draw has levelled out, the readings will be taken.

To load and apply power to the power supply, a combination of IBT and Furmark will be run to put as much strain on the power supply as possible. After 10 minutes the readings will be taken and to ensure maximum strain, the CPU will be overclocked to 4.8GHz. Depending on the power of the power supply, multiple graphics cards could be used in line with how comfortable I feel that the power supply will cope with such a load. In the case of this unit, the GTX 1060 doesn’t support SLI. We will endeavour to improve our testing methods over 2018 though!

ATX themselves specify that a fluctuation and variable of 5% is acceptable so to number crunch it means that:

3.3V = 3.135V-3.465V is acceptable
5V = 4.75V-5.25V is acceptable
12V = 11.4V – 12.6V is acceptable.

Any readings outside of these figures will be an automatic fail.

The performance of the Thermaltake Toughpower Grand RGB 850W in our somewhat primitive testing outputted good performance all-around and that’s exactly what we were expecting. The Toughpower Grand RGB 850W has an official 80PLUS Gold efficiency rating which further enhances the quality of this specific power supply.

What’s hot:

• 80PLUS Gold efficiency rating
• Backed by a 10-year warranty
• Good value
• RGB, RGB everywhere – Who doesn’t love RGB?
• 140cm Thermaltake Riing RGB fans is cool and quiet
• Flat ribboned low profile cables
• Fully Modular design

What’s not:

• None

Whether you’re looking to upgrade your existing system or create a new custom PC, the question to RGB or not to RGB is one that seems to dominate the purchase decision. It comes down a lot of the time to personal preference and budget. It’s no secret that RGB does increase the cost of components, but not everything has to be expensive, especially where the Toughpower Grand RGB 850W power supply is concerned.

As it currently stands in the UK, the Thermaltake Toughpower Grand RGB 850W power supply is available for around £95 at Amazon UK. This represents good value for money and for an 850W power supply with an 80PLUS Gold efficiency rating, that’s fully modular and also has RGB, you would be hard pressed to find anything better. The design is good, the unit feels solid and in our basic testing, it produced good results all-around so I will be giving the Toughpower Grand RGB 850W our gold award today.

With a solid mix of quality, useful features and a classy RGB design, the Thermaltake Toughpower Grand RGB 850 watt power supply is the real deal!

Thanks to Thermaltake for sending a sample of the Toughpower Grand RGB 850w in for review.

Buy here in the UK: https://amzn.to/2Nw1IG8
Buy here in the US: https://amzn.to/2pLfWcA

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