Review: ThermalTake Dr. Power II PSU Tester

Posted by Ed Smith

Friday, 11 November 2011 02:11

Article Index
Review: ThermalTake Dr. Power II PSU Tester
The Box and the Tester itself
Test Methods and Results
Verdict and Conclusion

Page 1 of 4

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Introduction

A surprise box showed up from ThermalTake today, upon opening it I found this, a Dr. Power II Universal ATX Power Supply Tester:

box-front

Thermaltake has been around for a while and put out some very good products over the years, my first aftermarket CPU heatsink was a Thermaltake Big Typhoon, I still have it and it's still a very good heatsink! But I digress, so lets give Thermaltake a chance to talk about themselves for a bit:

"- While still a relatively young company, established in 1999, Thermaltake is built on unwavering will and dedication to address issues and innovate at the same time for computer enthusiasts and corporate users worldwide .

- With strong support of Research & Development team standing behind the brand, Thermaltake is committed to never-follow but always-lead.

- In past decades, the industrial and technological advancements in different fields have shaped the world we live in today and have also made a big impact on the environment. Thermaltake takes great measures to ensure the product that we produce relieve these impacts by being first to act on 80 PLUS® specification for computer power supply that greatly reduces the amount of electricity that a computer consumes.

- Always striving to be the best, we continuously benchmark our performance against the very best internally and externally.

- Customers are our greatest asset and Thermaltake does not take that for granted. That is why Thermaltake is the industry leading in customer service and customer support with around-the-clock automated product return service."
(That, by the way, came from their web page)

Anyway, what we have here is a power supply tester. There are two sorts of PSU testers, one reads voltages of a PSU you plug into it, and is fairly cheap.

The other reads the voltages of a PSU you plug into it while putting a calibrated massive load on the PSU and measuring currant and efficiency and such, and costs quite a few thousand dollars.

While I'd absolutely love for someone to send me one of the second time, this is the first sort, also the much more practical sort for a person to buy for their own use.

With the preamble out of the way, lets head to page two and actually look at the unit itself.