Introduction
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With AMD’s Quad FX platform now available – featuring two dual-core Athlon 64 FX CPUs, up to four video cards and up to 12 hard disk drives – power supplies reaching 1,000 W may become more and more common among very high-end gamers. Tagan fills this space with its TurboJet TG1100-U95, a 1,100 W power supply that has a terrific aesthetics. We completely disassembled this beast to see if what was inside the box was on the same level of what was outside. Read on.
The presentation of this product is really impressive. It comes in a very good-looking high-quality leather case, which you can definitely use for a different purpose after you install the power supply on your system – for instance, you can use it as fancy toolbox.
Figure 1: TurboJet TG1100-U95 comes with a case.
On Figures 2 and 3 you have an overall look of TurboJet TG1100-U95.
Figure 2: Tagan TurboJet TG1100-U95.
Figure 3: Tagan TurboJet TG1100-U95.
It is a high-end power supply with active PFC. Instead of having a big 120 mm fan on its bottom it has two 80 mm fans, one at its front and the other at its back. We prefer the 120 mm fan approach, as it provides a better airflow with lower noise level. This power supply has the same size as a conventional ATX power supply, which drew our attention, as Galaxy 1000 W from Enermax had to be bigger in order to accommodate all necessary components to deliver true 1,000 W of power – and this model from Tagan is labeled 1,100 W. This gave us a hint that we needed to take a careful look at its internal design.
As you can see in Figure 3, this power supply does not have a modular cabling system, and this is one of the major flaws of this power supply, and we will explain why in just a few moments.
This power supply comes with four independent auxiliary PCI Express power cables for feeding up to four video cards. These cables use a top-notch rigid rounded sleeving with a ferrite bead at one of the ends (this component works as a filter), which is great. What immediately caught our eye was that these cables are identical to the ones used by OCZ ModStream 520 W, so this gave us a clue that the real manufacturer of this Tagan power supply could be the same real manufacturer of OCZ ModStream 520 W (and in fact it is: Topower).
There is a colored sticker on each ferrite bead identifying each cable: PCIE-1 through PCIE-4. The connectors used are also top notch, very different from the standard connector.
Figure 4: Detail of one of the auxiliary PCI Express cables.
One problem with this power supply is that unless you have four video cards on your system, you will have unused auxiliary PCI Express cables hanging inside your PC, blocking the airflow. If this power supply used a modular cabling system, you could simply remove the unused cables.
