Thermaltake Litepower 450W Power Supply Review

Installation

Installing the power supply into the case was rather simple. I did however have problems trying to connect everything together. The first downside that I realized was that it only had a single 6-pin PCI-E connector, but I needed two for my 9800GTX. So I ordered a converter cable which takes two 4-pin molex’s into a 6-pin PCI-E connector; not bad for $3.



Thermaltake Litepower 450W Power Supply Thermaltake Litepower 450W Power Supply

Then I realized that there was only a 4-pin ATX cable and I needed an 8-pin. Luckily I was still able to use the 4 pins closest to the CPU. Then when trying to get everything connected I found that this power supply was definitely not designed for lower mounted power supplies. Since my case has the power supply mounted near the bottom of the case I had to run all of the cables upwards, most of which were just barely long enough to reach their positions. It was a tight squeeze, but I was able to get them all to work; I just wouldn’t really recommend it for people with a lower mounted power supply case.


Thermaltake Litepower 450W Power Supply Thermaltake Litepower 450W Power Supply

Testing

The following system was used in testing:

Case: NZXT Tempest
Motherboard: XFX 680i LT SLI
CPU: Q6600 @ 2.4 GHz
Memory: 2x2GB OCZ SLI Ready DDR2 800 MHz
CPU Cooling: Thermaltake ISGC-400
Drives:
– 1 x SATA 640GB HDD
– 1 x PATA DVD Drive
– 1 x SATA DVD-RW Drive

I stress tested the Thermaltake Litepower 450W using OCCT Perestroika on Windows Vista 32-bit on a 30 minute test.

VCore: Ripple 0.05 (4.52%)
3.3V: Ripple 0.00 (0.00%)
5V: Ripple: 0.02 (0.00%)
12V: Ripple: 0.06 (0.00%)


Thermaltake Litepower 450W Power Supply Thermaltake Litepower 450W Power Supply

The VCore Ripple was only 4.52% compared to our last power supply test, the Toughpower XT 750W which was at 4.68%. It also didn’t have a ripple on the 3.3V which was barely undervolted.


Thermaltake Litepower 450W Power Supply Thermaltake Litepower 450W Power Supply

Both the 5V and 12V had no ripple at all. The 5V was undervolted at about 4.72V while the 12V was undervolted at about 11.2V which is about the same as our Toughpower XT 750W tests.

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