Hands On: Thermaltake Toughpower SFX Platinum 1000W
Can an SFX unit stand up to full-sized parts when it comes to load-carrying efficiency? A quick look at its Cybenetics listing shows that the ToughPower SFX Platinum certainly should be able to, particularly when powered from a 115V source! And those things are important here, because our test lab is in USA and uses full-size units in its comparison.
The retail boxed Toughpower SFX Platinum includes a full-sized ATX adapter plate and enough cables to connect several graphics cards in addition to the twin eight-pin ATX12V/EPS12V connectors of high-power overclocking motherboards.
The main power cable is 11.4” between connectors, the CPU and PCIe cables 15.5” between connectors, and the drive cables around 11.5” between the power supply connector and the first connector in series. Both CPU power cables are divisible (8 pin to 4+4), the two 8-pin PCIe cable are divisible (6+2 pin) on both outputs, the 12VHPWR cable is singular and 600W rated, the two SATA drive power cables support four drives at 6” spacing, and the legacy drive cable supports four ATA plus one floppy drive.
While none of these connectors were made by Molex the firm has produced its version of all of these, including the 4-pin ATA power connectors.
While the Toughpower SFX Platinum’s connections appear similar to those of several other cases, the one marked 12V-2X6 is only cable we’d assume to be interchangeable with other power supply series and/or brands.
All 83.3A of +12V power are available on a single rail: We’re told that the 5V and 3.3V rails are stepped down from 12V, which explains why their 120W can’t be added to the 12V rail’s 1000W to calculate total output power.
Inside we find a pair of giant Rubycon capacitors on the primary side along with a slew of its polymer caps on the secondary side: Unable to find clear markers to make our own determination, I pit Google’s Ai against Grok until I reached a concession of HKC as the unit’s ODM: A partnership between HKC’s Kingboard and PCB supplier Jiangxi Shanxu Precision Circuit Co. (maker of the KB-6160 output board) was a major factor in its determination.
This fan is probably the greatest factor in Thermaltake’s Toughpower SFX warranty limitation of 7 years, as opposed to the ten-years or more of larger Toughpower siblings: Its 92mm by 15mm frame is sure to require additional speed to cool similar power supply loads, and replacing it requires one to remove the fragile sticker from the port side to access the screws that hold that panel to the casing, as well as cut the glue that joins the board behind its connector to the board in front of its connector.
Then again, we should expect to sacrifice something to fit high-power parts into compact spaces: Here’s the short list of how this SFX unit compares to our previously-tested full-sized models:
| Model | Toughpower SFX Platinum (PS-STP-1000FNFAPU-1) | InWin P105II (IW-PS-PII1050W) | Sama P1200 (XPH1200-AP) | XPG Fusion 1600 Titanium |
| +12V Max (Amps) | 83.3A | 87.5A | 100A | 133.3A |
| 12VHPWR | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2 |
| 6+2 Pin PCIe | 4 | 3 | 3 | 6 |
| EPS12V | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| 80Plus Cert. | Platinum | Platinum | Platinum | Titanium |
| Weight | 1.09kg | 1.70kg | 1.75kg | 2.59kg |
| Depth | 104mm | 150mm | 150mm | 210mm |
| Warranty | 7-years | 10-years | 10-years | 12-years |
Here’s the system we’re using to test it:
| System Configuration | |
| CPU | Intel Core i9-13900K: 24C/32T, 3.0-5.8 GHz, 36 MB L3 Cache, LGA 1700, Locked at 5.0P/4.0E GHz, 1.25V Core |
| CPU Cooler | Alphacool Core 1 LT Aurora, Eisbecher D5 150mm, NexXxoS UT60 X-Flow 240mm |
| Motherboard | ASRock Z790 Taichi Carrara, BIOS 12.13 (04/23/2024) |
| RAM | Crucial Pro OC Gaming Edition DDR5-6400 32GB Kit |
| Graphics | ASRock RX 7700 XT Phantom Gaming 12GB OC 2276 MHz GPU, 2599 MHz Boost, GDDR6-18000 |
| System Drive | Crucial T700 PCIe Gen5 2TB M.2 SSD |
| Test Condition | |
| CPU Load | Prime95 v30.8 build 16 Torture Test, Small FFTs |
| GPU Load | Furmark 2.7.0.0 GL Test, 1920×1080 |
And here’s how its power consumption compares at system idle, and under a combined ~735W load:
What else can we say? We expected it to be noisy but it wasn’t. It took several minutes of full load to even get warm enough to kick the fan on, and even then it was quieter than our system fans. Given how little fan activity was required for our system, Thermaltake’s shortened warranty must reflect a different perspective regarding which kind of user is most likely to desire 1000W from a compact casing.
| Toughpower SFX Platinum (PS-STP-1000FNFAPU-1) | |
| Pros | Cons |
| 80 Plus Platinum certified Established brand support Acceptably Priced | Abbreviated (7-year) warranty |
| The Verdict | |
| The Toughpower SFX Platinum 1000W makes great use of its compact size, but we feel like we should get the full 10-year warranty for its $200 MSRP. Fortunately, it’s currently marked down to an acceptable $170 | |
The best product of any class automatically qualifies for our top award, unless we don’t have a reasonably close product to compare. But the Toughpower SFX Platinum punched above its SFX class by producing roughly average results for the full size class. And so, the best SFX unit we’ve tested gets our top award.
