Thortech Thunderbolt Plus 800 W Power Supply Review

Conclusions

The new Thortech Thunderbolt Plus 800 W is good power supply, and its interesting digital power meter will make a lot of enthusiasts dreaming on having this unit.

However, there are two points that we don’t know about this unit yet: price and availability. We hope it reaches the market below the USD 200 mark.

It is not, however, a flawless unit. At full load under real-world temperatures, the unit failed to present efficiency above 87% and noise levels, although always inside the proper range, was too high at +12 V and -12 V. Voltage regulation was always inside a tighter 3% tolerance (i.e., voltages closer to their nominal values than required), except when we pulled 800 W from it, when the +3.3 V got outside this tighter range (it was still inside the allowed range, though).

There is also one detail about its digital power meter that you have to keep in mind. It doesn’t monitor the -12 V and +5VSB outputs, and it may present wrong numbers for total DC power and efficiency if your computer is pulling current from these outputs.

If you don’t care about the digital power meter, than you will be making a better deal buying the Corsair HX850W power supply, which costs  only USD 160, also has modular cabling system, comes with six connectors for video cards (instead of only four) and 12 SATA power connectors (instead of only eight).

You see, Ecos Consulting, the company behind 80 Plus, gave Corsair HX850W their Gold certification, but Corsair decided to downgrade this unit to Silver because it couldn’t deliver 87% efficiency at full load at real-world temperatures (a nice example to be followed). The savvy user that follows our reviews knows that the 80 Plus certification is many times only a marketing badge and does not represent the real-world performance of a power supply.