Thermaltake Smart RGB 700 Watt 80+ PSU Review

Following on from my reviews of the excellent Thermaltake View 32 and View 22 cases I have now been checking out the budget-friendly Smart RGB 700 Watt 80+ PSU.As the name suggests this is a PSU with a pre-installed, 256 colour RGB fan hub with 15 lighting modes to choose from and built-in memory.This range of PSUs features capacities ranging from 500W to 700W and has an 80 PLUS Standard certification. This PSU uses a fully wired cabling system which helps keep costs down but will make tidying up the cables much harder.Priced at £66 on Amazon via Scan, or £59.99 direct from Scan + postage, this is well into the budget level of PSUs. At first, I thought it was stupid adding RGB to a fully wired PSU with an 80PLUS rating, my immediate thought was that I would prefer a none light up model that had either hybrid cabling or a higher rating. Looking at the prices though, the RGB doesn’t appear to add much if any cost premium. There were no PSUs with this wattage for that price using hybrid cabling, the closest option is from Thermaltake themselves with the 700W SMART DPS G at £75.

Specification

The official blurb from the Thermaltake states that:

Smart RGB 700W is equipped with a powerful single +12V rail, eliminating the limitations caused by voltage distributions, delivering the power your CPU and VGA demand in any situations. Providing the best compatibility, conversion efficiency and stable voltage output.

For the fans, the SMART RGB series adopt 120mm cooling fan with intelligent RPM control guarantees excellent cool performance and near silent operation.You get plenty of wired connections that should be capable of powering some high-end systems with the options being:

Cable Type	Cable	Connector
ATX 20+4 pin	1	1
ATX 4+4 pin	1	1
PCI-E 6+2 pin	1	2
SATA	2	6
Molex 4 pin	2	5
FDD 4 pin	1	1

The information regarding the power states:

Deliver up to 87% efficiency under real world load conditions to promise low power losses. Additionally, Smart RGB Series has been optimized to work with Intel’s latest, seventh-generation Kabylake processors to achieve maximum energy saving.

I am not really sure why it needs to states Kabylake ready, as far as I am aware that requires no special power, but I guess it is all about the marketing.The RGB is controlled via a button on the PSU , the fan color can be switched among variants including Pulse Red/Green/Blue/Yellow/Purple/Light Blue/White, RGB Cycle, Solid Red/Green/Blue/Yellow/Purple/Light Blue/ White, and a LED Off mode. The fan is also constructed with a built-in memory function, saving the colour applied and ensuring the same colour selection every time you boot your PC.

Performance

The biggest issue I faced with this PSU is that it is wired, I haven’t used a fully wired PSU in a long time and my cable management skills are questionable at best. However, as mentioned, if you are n a strict budget then you don’t really have much choice but to go with fully wired, and modular doesn’t provide a great deal of advantages apart from making it a bit easier to build.The cables are long enough for my full-sized case and with a little work or a PSU shroud, you should easily be able to hide the extra cables.

Again, due to the budget nature, this is not semi fanless, though the fan does have intelligent RPM control. Looking at Thermaltake RPM graph if the load is kept under 40% the RPM will be around 800. At full load it will be 2000 and 28.6dB. During my use, the fan is audible at all loads, but it is quiet and has a pleasant sound profile with no high pitch buzzing or humming and no clicking.I don’t have the gear to test the performance in detail but it powered up my moderate R5 1600 & GTX1070 system with no issues. The rep I dealt with said that the PSU exceeded the claimed marketing efficiency comfortably, though I have no way to prove this. I have seen other reviews that appear to corroborate this statement and looking at reviews for other Thermaltake PSUs on websites such as JonnyGuru, indicate that Thermaltake makes some pretty solid budget PSUs. The PSU also comes with a healthy 5 year warranty which goes to show the confidence in the build quality by Thermaltake as most other cheap options have a standard 2 year warranty.The RGB features on this PSU are one of its main selling points, but for me, it is low on my list of things I want from a PSU. I want something that can reliably power my system. That being said though the RGB works well, there is no smart control though, you need to do it via the button on the back, and you can optionally switch it off if you choose. Its default colour changing mode does provide a nice effect and it will no doubt make it a popular PSU.

Overall

I approached this review with a little bit of scepticism, if you are on a budget, the aesthetics of your PSU should be low on the list of your requirements.However, it looks like Thermaltake have produced a PSU that exceeds the marketing materials performance while adding RGB at no apparent cost, you even get a better than average 5 year warranty. So, there is really nothing to criticize here.This is not the cheapest 700w PSU on the market, but at this price point, you need to be very careful about what you choose as some cheap Chinese brands could potentially damage your system.With the Thermaltake Smart RGB 700 Watt PSU, you are getting one of the most affordable PSUs on the market that can safely power your system while also adding a touch of RGB flair to your build.