Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 40 series of graphics cards is now upon us and available buy right now, but you’ll need a new power suppy that has the new 16-pin PCIe 5.0 connector, which is smaller and not compatible with exisiting 8-pin PCI-E connectors. So this unfortunately means you’ll need a new power supply.
Today, we’ll be taking a quick look at the Thermaltake TOUGHPOWER GF3 1000W Gold Power Supply which features the new 16-pin PCIe 5.0 connector for next-gen graphics cards. We’ve reviewed many Thermaltake power supplies in the past, the most recent was the Thermaltake TOUGHPOWER PF1 ARGB 1050W Power Supply and we thought it was a high quality modular power supply, that offered sARGB illumination, solid stability, 80Plus Gold and quiet operation … all at an affordble price.
The Thermaltake TOUGHPOWER GF3 1000W power supply does not offer any RGB lighting, but it does come with masssive 10-year warranty, 80 Plus Gold certification and to ensure stability, it’s built with high quality 100% Japanese capacitors. It also features a powerful single +12V rail at 83.5A delivering a total power output of up to 1000W. Now that, should be about the bare minimum to go for these days, especially if you’re planning to get a GeForce RTX 40 series of graphics.
The PSU also comes with Smart Zero fan for quiet operation, Low Ripple Noise Design, a large 135mm Fluid Dynamic Bearing fan for cooling, and it’s fully compatible with Intel PSDG ATX 3.0 specifications.
The PSU is fully modular comes with all the necessary flat modular cables needed to build your system, including one special 12VHPWR cable (labelled 450W) featuring the new 16-pin PCIe 5.0 connectors. One thing that really baffles me … why are these new 12VHPWR cables labelled with wattage rating? And does the wattage rating really matter in terms of what type of high-end graphics card it can support?
The reason why I’m asking, is becasue most recently, we’ve heard horror stories of one user complaining that the new 16-pin PCIe 5.0 connector on their GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card, had actually melted due to the intense power draw! How true is this story, we can’t fully verify. That said, we’ll have to check it when we get ourselves a GeForce RTX 4090.
I’m sure many of you already know who Thermaltake is but in case you don’t here’s some info on the company. I would like to thank Thermaltake Premium for providing the review sample. This is what Thermaltake Premium has to say about themselves on their website:
TT Premium.com, the most comprehensive liquid-cooling and modding online shopping experience. The platform is designed to provide exceptional high-end products and services to customers worldwide. Thermaltake TT Premium includes several case modding products that support VR (Virtual Reality) gaming systems. Thermaltake TT Premium is the best high-end liquid cooling and case modding solutions shopping platform that provides client-tailored services and secure processing, to meet all user expectations. All products follow Thermaltake’s core values of Excellent Quality, Unique Design, Diverse Combinations, and Boundless Creativity. Thermaltake TT Premium has expanded its footprint to over 100 countries and territories by creating a seamless network connecting 5 major markets; the United States, Europe, Australia, Taiwan, and China (will be online in April) of seamless networking.
Official website：
- TT Premium Global – http://ttpremium.com
- TT Premium Europe – https://ttpremium.eu
- TT Premium Australia – https://ttpremium.com.au
- TT Premium Taiwan – https://ttpremium.com.tw
- TT Premium China – https://ttpremium.com.cn
At the time review, we didn’t have a Nvidia GeForce RTX 40 series graphics card on-hand, so we’re unable to fully test the 16-pin PCIE 5.0 power connectors. However, to test the PSU at full load, we used an Intel Core i9-13900K mounted on an ASRock Z790 Tachi motherboard, and cooled by a 240 AIO cooler with 2 x RGB Riing fans from thermaltake. The test rig also includes 32GB of Patriot Viper RGB DDR5-6200 ram, Adata Legend 840 1TB SSD, and a EVGA GeForce RTX 3090 graphics card.
You can buy the Thermaltake TOUGHPOWER GF3 1000W
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