Back when I reviewed Antec’s 600 watt Trio power supply, I was just coming to grips with the fact that 400 watt units could easily be out-paced by today’s current crop of high-end gaming machines.
Now comes word that the new generation of SLI cards will each have dual power connectors (potentially flowing a total of 150 watts of line power to each card before even considering what might be slipping in through the PCI-e bus) and suddenly even 600 watts doesn’t quite seem like enough. (Should we bring quad-core processor into the picture as well?)
That’s what brought Tagan’s Turbojet TG1100-U96 to my attention. The number following “TG” indicates that it’s an 1100-watt power supply. Yes, that’s one thousand, one hundred watts –1.1kw if you like to think in terms of power generation rapidly approaching the commercial level.
How do you know you have a lot of power on tap? Tagan provides 10 SATA connectors, four Molex connectors (one shielded), a 20+4-pin motherboard connector, a four-pin auxiliary motherboard connector and an eight-pin auxiliary motherboard connector.
There are also four PCI Express video card power leads, all shielded and each drawing from its own 12v rail. (Yes, that would mean there are four 12v rails…)
Even the insides are a thing of beauty. (Hey, but don’t take it apart unless you’re a professional. Fingers and electricity don’t really work out all that well together.)
How about a few specs straight from Tagan:
What’s that you say? You don’t have a reason to use all those SATA power connectors? You say you have a few ATA devices as well? What are you in, the stone age? Still, it’s no problem, Tagan has you covered, literally. Adapters are included to keep you smiling –and your ATA devices humming along fully juiced. Tagan really hasn’t forgotten about anything.
No, really…..
My goal with this PSU was to create a Core 2 Duo Extreme system packed in an Antec Nine Hundred Case. What I didn’t realize when I accepted the Tagan supply was that most of the existing PSUs in this range are a bit longer (er, maybe deeper?) than your average case makes allowances for. Something in the back of my mind thought “Sawzall.”
But no! What do my wondering eyes behold but the Tagan PSU slides in easily, and locks and loads without incident. (”Lock” is a bit of misdirection. I used black thumscrews to hbold it in place because I was fresh out of ugly silver machine screws. Darn!)
Did it work? Well, I always have a little anxiety when throwing the switch for the first time when I’ve built a system. (What did I forget? What didn’t I do? You’d think after 30 years of building systems I’d have gotten over that…)
Not to worry –nothing happened. Nothing except the system powered up fine. (You’ll see the system review a little later.) The power supply is surprisingly quiet and five hard drives (yes, I added two 500GB SATA drives at the last minute), 2GB of memory, “and the rest” haven’t seemed to make a dent in it at all.
Nice… All very nice…
Don’t be concerned that you probably can’t find Tagan at your corner grocery store. The company is big over in Europe and just now starting to put down a footprint in North America. TG1100-U96 is available at Newegg and it’s not cheap at $399. But, in comparison, it’s not quite as expensive as some of the 1,000 watt PSUs you’ll find on the market. (Although it’s way less expensive than some graphics cards…)
Bottom line, Tagan’s TG1100-U96 gets a four star rating from the Lab of Doom and Pepsi Cola. Yes, it’s one short of the maximum but that would only have happened if it had also been designed with modular connectors. Then again, I’d probably be a little worried about 1,110 watts not hardwired to transformers so take it with a grain of salt.
