FRONTPAGE Thermaltake Smart Series 530 W Power Supply Review

The Smart Series is Thermaltake’s newest entry level series, the basic idea is to provide good power without expensive frills. Given the scarcity of good low end units in the power supply world I applaud this idea, hopefully this unit will give me some physical to applaud as well. We’ll see!

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I think I'll stay with the Corsair Builder Series for value PSUs. That solder blob... just...

Tragic, really. Other than that it's a decent enough unit. So it goes!
There are more Tt PSU reviews coming, they have plenty of chances for redemption

Yea, I hope. I heard they're pretty decent with big PSUs, but that the smaller siblings are nowhere near the quality of the big ones.

Thermaltake should be slapped for calling it "Smart Series"!

Reminds me too much of Antec's dreaded SmartPower family, (Discontinued, thank God!) which was plagued by a flawed fan controller, which the outside fan usually never works!

I now have a bulging Fuhjyyu cap next to the fan that usually never works on my 2005 Antec SmartPower 2.0 500W.

I hope the solder blob was just a 1 time accident and not related to the marginal soldering quality, imagine the frustration of your below avg pc builder who gets one of these things and at the push of a button watches every component in his system fry.

I personally think these budget power supplies shouldn't even exist as they are often equivalent to some generic no name psu that comes with oem computers and for not a whole lot more $$$ you can get something that is truly high quality, I learned my lesson years ago with the apevia brand.

Nah this thing is far superior to the $15 super cheap units, no way those put out their rated power!

I recently purchased this entry level PSU.

The reviewer failed to mention this:

For some reason the power connectors are all upside down in the chain.
I don't know why this is exactly but makes wiring quite difficult.
Which should drop the review down a wee bit past "Meh." If you got a mid-tower or an oversized mid-tower like my 600T Corsair.

Can you define "Upside down"?
Does the case have the PSU at the top, or the bottom?
Every unit I've used has assumed that the cables are coming down from a PSU mounted at the top of the case. That goes for everything from the cheapest unit up through the $450 NEX1500.

Bobnova said:

Can you define "Upside down"?
Does the case have the PSU at the top, or the bottom?
Every unit I've used has assumed that the cables are coming down from a PSU mounted at the top of the case. That goes for everything from the cheapest unit up through the $450 NEX1500.

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Corsair 600T SE White
My PSU is mounted on the bottom. I haven't seen a case with a top mounted PSU in a very long time.

The wires are way too short to do a top down while hiding the wire looms:

I have one branch of 3 sata power connections going towards a top bay position for my dvd burner
( I could move it down, I guess but esthetically it would look off to me.) and from there I had to skip one sata power connection due to this spinning to be able to mount to the first position HD.

Ofcourse all cases are different. This was my experience. I do have some Molex to sata connects from a previous build, but if a builder doesn't have these on hand, he will have a bad day.

The other row of 3 Sata power connects went from bottom up.. and thats when you have to spin them around and lose about 2 inches of wire each time... out of 6 drives I can hit 5. the molex/sata connect took care of the last drive I am 99.8% sure my statement is correct.

Like I said, all the PSUs I've checked personally have been set up for top to bottom cable runs along the SATA drves. It's annoying, and standard.
This includes my Smart-530w review sample, as clearly shown in the review, in this picture:


Now if yours don't match what you see in that picture, blame whoever Thermaltake has manufacturing them at the moment.
If yours do match what you see in the picture, then they, like pretty much every unit out there, are still set up for top to bottom cable runs.

It sounds like your issue is that you want to do a bottom to top cable run for wire management purposes. As a non-modular, cheap, PSU this unit isn't exactly built with wire management in mind.
Still, if you want to do bottom to top you can put the drives in upside down, other than the optical drive of course.
Or if you're feeling bold you can pull the connectors off and put them back on upside down (per spec, anyway). Don't mess it up though, or everything dies.


In any event, the connectors on the unit I had in my hands were 100% standard, including orientation, as the photo in the review shows.

Those connectors are easy to remove and replace, you could hack it to look good if you really wanted to.

I agree, but the current design is in my opinion a flaw. My previous PSU did not have this issue.
Suggesting to put drives in upside down is not the greatest advice, since heat rises and in this case would mean drawing heat back on to the plates. I'm not trolling, the rest of your review was top notch and very thorough. I wish I read it before my purchase, but I am satisfied with the purchase... and no bonus welding blobs to speak of.

It is just a legacy design that didn't adapt to the new standards.

And honestly I don't think it would make such a difference for the drives to be upside down.

What was the previous PSU that had the connectors wired for bottom-up?
I have never seen one.

The highest heat part of a drive is the aluminum housing that it also uses for a heatsink. It's on the bottom.