Packaging

The box is quite large and on top of it we find two cloth straps that play the role of the handle. On the front side we find the capacity (800W) highlighted in gold fonts and on the bottom right corner resides the 80 Plus Gold badge. On the opposite corner we find the SLI and the five year warranty badges. On the rear of the box we are informed about various specifications and there is also a description of the available cables/connectors. In the bottom right corner we read that the unit was designed in Taiwan and manufactured in China, like most of the available PSUs today on the market.

Contents

The package contents are well protected by packing foam. The PSU comes in a luxury cloth bag which is a nice touch, especially if we take into account its high price. The bundle is quite rich and includes several Velcro ties, two sets of bolting screws, a user's manual and a pouch holding all modular cables.

The gadget you see in the above photos is called iPower Meter and mounts in a 5.25" bay. Through it you get vital information about the PSU like efficiency, DC Watts you pull out of it, voltages and amperes drawn from the main rails, the internal temperature and fan RPMs. Through iPower Meter you can also set the PSU's fan to two modes, namely Quiet and Full. In the first the fan's speed is auto controlled depending on the internal temperature of the PSU while in Full mode the fan works constantly at 100%. We don't recommend setting the fan to Full mode since it's quite noisy when it works at full speed.

Although this gadget looks very promising and offers plenty of information to the interested user we don't find it ergonomic and we will explain why. Since this device can be only installed in a free 5.25” bay means that you must have a clear and easy view to the front of the PC chassis and this is a little bit of a problem if the latter is placed on the floor and under the desk, a place where most of us have our towers. If Thortech gave us the ability to install the iPower Meter on our desk then things definitely would be far better. On top of that it would be much more convenient if they also provided some kind of software that would give access to the iPower Meter's readings. We hope that Thortech will take our comments into account and implement them on the future Thunderbolt units.

Exterior

The dark grey matte finish is scratch resistant and not prone to finger prints. On the right and left sides there are two nice stickers with the Thunderbolt Plus logo and on the bottom side we find the power specifications label. On the top, the fan grill uses an octagon design while on the front we find the classic honeycomb grill. Right next to the AC receptacle resides an On/Off switch, a feature that we find essential for all PSUs although some manufacturers omit it from their units. On the rear side the modular sockets use color coding instead of labels. PCIe cables are connected to the yellow sockets while black sockets are used for SATA and peripheral cables. Finally all hardwired cables are nicely sleeved back into the housing and around the cable exit hole there is a grommet to protect the wires from the casing edges.