A Succesful Contender for the ATX 3.0 Membership

Montech is a somewhat new participant within the PC Energy & Cooling market. The Taiwanese firm first appeared in 2016 and rapidly made its presence worldwide. Montech is presently targeted on designing and producing PC circumstances, energy provide models (PSUs), and CPU coolers. Because the core philosophy of the corporate was to be aggressive when it comes to pricing, the overwhelming majority of its merchandise have been concentrating on the high-volume mainstream market.

Currently, in an effort to entice players and fans, Montech shyly started releasing high-end and top-tier merchandise. Not too way back, we examined the Century Gold 650W, an attention-grabbing high-quality PSU that was excellently balanced between high quality, efficiency, and worth.

Getting into 2023, the corporate is taking an enormous leap of religion and releasing its new Titan Gold PSU sequence. The Titan Gold consists of high-output models designed for highly effective gaming programs, a totally new market section for the corporate. In as we speak’s evaluate, we’re carefully analyzing probably the most highly effective unit of the sequence, the Titan Gold 1200W PSU. Apart from being a high-quality unit by itself, the Titan Gold comes with a leg up within the type of ATX 3.0 compliance, which makes Montech a member of what is nonetheless a reasonably unique membership for corporations with ATX 3.0 models obtainable.

Packaging and Bundle

Montech provides the Titan Gold 1200W unit in a sturdy cardboard field. The art work on the field is simplistic and targeted round an image of the PSU itself, however there’s loads of details about the specs and certifications of the PSU on the edges and rear of the field.

Solely absolutely the primary objects for the set up of the PSU may be discovered contained in the packaging of the Montech Titan Gold, with the corporate supplying only a energy wire and 4 mounting screws. There are not any cable ties or straps, or every other equipment to be discovered.

The Titan Gold 1200W ATX 3.0 PSU is a totally modular design, permitting for the elimination of each DC energy cable, together with the 24-pin ATX connector. Many of the cables have individually sleeved black wires and with black connectors, however the ATX 24-pin cable and the 16-pin PCIe 5.0 cable include black wires bundled inside nylon sleeving. The unusual factor right here is the presence of 5 PCIe connectors, as one of many cables solely has a single connector.

The Montech Titan Gold 1200W ATX 3.0 PSU

Exterior Look

Not like what most would anticipate from an organization that’s making an attempt to maintain prices all the way down to a minimal, Montech truly invested some assets into making the Titan Gold 1200W PSU visually engaging. The chassis cowl is punched to create a pure finger guard formed after the corporate’s brand. Everything of the PSU is sprayed with matte black paint that’s extremely proof against fingerprints but in addition somewhat simple to chip if mishandled. It measures 160 mm lengthy, which is 20 mm longer than what the ATX normal dictates, however we don’t foresee any compatibility issues with any trendy case that’s meant to accommodate an above-average PC.

The sticker with the unit’s electrical certifications and specs is discovered overlaying many of the PSU’s high aspect. A few quarter of the sticker is blue and will draw undesirable consideration if seen from a windowed aspect panel. Either side of the unit have the corporate brand embossed onto them.

On the rear aspect of the unit, proper subsequent to the AC energy connector and the fundamental on/off change, there’s a latching push button that controls the “smart-zero fan mode”. Because the identify suggests, this mode permits for passive operation whereas the PSU’s load is low – a continuously utilized method by many producers these days. Disabling it would power the fan to constantly spin so long as the PSU is powered on however its pace will nonetheless be managed thermally.

The entrance aspect of the unit is host to the quite a few connectors for the modular cables. A legend and the corporate brand are printed on the chassis. There’s additionally a sticker with the unit’s serial quantity.

Inside Design

Montech is making use of a 135 mm fan for the cooling wants of the Titan Gold 1200W PSU. The fan is made by Hong Hua, a well-liked producer amongst PC PSU OEMs. It has a fluid dynamic bearing (FDB) engine for quiet operation and longevity, but in addition has a particularly excessive most pace of 2300 RPM.

The OEM behind the Titan Gold 1200W PSU is Channel-Nicely Applied sciences (CWT), which isn’t an enormous shock contemplating that Montech has been in collaboration with them for a number of of their higher merchandise, together with the Century Gold 650W PSU that we reviewed just a few months in the past. The shock right here is that, whereas we did not know this when soliciting PSUs for evaluate, the Titan Gold 1200W is utilizing the identical platform because the MSI MPG A1000G that we not too long ago reviewed as properly. It’s an upgraded model of CWT’s hottest platform, barely tweaked so as to add ATX 3.0 help. So this affords us a second take a look at CTW’s platform, working at the next wattage.

Total, the design of the Titan Gold 1200W relies on confirmed and comparatively easy topologies. The filtering stage is typical, with 4 Y capacitors, two X capacitors, and two filtering inductors, with two rectifying bridges on a large heatsink following proper after. The lengthy heatsink that follows holds the energetic APFC parts. Two very giant capacitors, one 450V/680μF from Nippon Chemi-Con and one 420V/470μF from Rubycon, in addition to an enormous filtering inductor. The full capacitance of the circuit could be very excessive and can undoubtedly trigger a excessive inrush present which will trigger small or fast circuit breakers to journey.

Shifting on to the first aspect of the primary transformer, we discover two transistors on a medium-sized heatsink, forming a typical half-bridge LLC inversion circuitry. The core of the secondary aspect is on a vertical daughterboard, which is dwelling to eight energy transistors that convert the transformer’s output to the primary DC output of the PSU. The three.3V and 5V traces are being generated through DC-to-DC conversion circuitry that may be discovered on their very own vertical daughterboard. The secondary aspect capacitors are all made by Nippon Chemi-Con and Nichicon.