Page 7
The Verdict
The Tagan TG1100-U95 power supply is a fairly impressive power Supply.
The one thing that keeps sticking to my mind is can this unit really deliver 1100 Watts ? Unfortunately we do not have the gear to test such an amount of power draw. And considering my power bill .. that's actually a good thing. However the sheer size of the Tagan TG1100-U95 made me wonder about this a lot so I started to read some other reviews as all 1000+ Watt PSU's I have seen to date are much bigger, and for a good reason.
Now since we do not have a professional load tester yet our colleagues from Planet3Dnow.de where able to use one (a Chroma 8000, which is some really serious gear) we had a look at their test results. We'll focus at the 12 volts rails. So according to the data we should have 960 Watts available over the 12 Volts rails. The load tester from Planet3Dnow.de made the 12 Volts circuit overload at 768 Watts at a 25º temperature. Which by the way are virtual +12 V rails (inside the power supply all these rails are connected to the single +12 V line this power supply has). You can check that report here (Chroma 8000 report for Tagan 1100W)
So when we analyze that data, normally this PSU would have had 960 Watts available on the 12 Volts rails (4x(20A x12V)) = 960 Watt. What we realistically looking at is (4x(??A x 12V))=768 Watt and this is effectively 16 AMPs per rail, 64 AMPs in total. That's really a lot, but not what is advertised. Now add to that the other rails and wattage:
768 W on the four +12 V lines + 180W (+3.3/+5) + 20W (-12/+5Vsb) = 968 Watt. We still have a mighty power supply. But it's not as advertised 1100 Watts, so that raises some questions.
Granted this PSU will absolutely not be an issue for anyone of you out there with a high-end system. To be able to stress the PSU even more I inserted two GeForce 8800 GTX cards in the test rig and started overclocking them as well. No luck .. everything remains 100% stable. And that's definitely very good.
So whilst the PSU would likely fail a 100% load test with specified and advertised numbers, this still remains to be a very good and stable PSU. The sound level however was a big issue for me. The dBA levels where not even near the advertised levels and hey .. I am a silence freak so that was the first thing that I noticed after I power up the PSU. Trust me, it's not could or anything, but I just believe that a PSU in this range and price-class should not make such an amount of sound.
So here we have a pretty good PSU that will deliver plenty enough power for today's high-end systems, makes somewhat too much noise in a perfect presentation. I mean I was surprised by the packaging in the leather casing. The cabling is a tad stiff but hey I'll live with that as it's magnetically shielded, I live that. And although the connectors are easy to use .. they are a tad on a big side which in some cases can be an issue. So my closing words will be this.
This is a great and stable PSU, it however does not do what it's specified for. And at a price-tag of near 400 EUR, you should expect to receive what you pay for and nothing less. The small size and packaging will make this PSU very attractive to the masses. But hey .. we did not experience even the slightest instability with this product no matter what we threw at it, and that's really good as we had a number of PSU's already fail our tests. It's a near Kilowatt power supply with plenty of power to last you a long time.
