Thunder is among the notorious brands in Pakistani market particularly because of their history with sub-par quality PSUs during COVID times. Their TGS-500 and TGS-550 PSUs were the infamous ones to blow-up GPUs as well as computers to the extent that the brand became a bomb meme among social media communities. In this rather-short review, we’ll be testing the 750W variant and at such a low price of about 12,500PKR this PSU offers 750W of power with 80+ Bronze qualification and DC-DC topology for minor output rails. We primarily were interested in the 500W and 550W variants but couldn’t find those in the market, so it was safer for us to assume that Thunder stopped providing those specific PSU models.

About the Company

Thunder Technology is domestic brand of Pakistan having OEMs for various computer parts such as cases, PSU, CPU-Coolers, Monitors and peripherals in China. While their PC cases are widely popular because of affordability and acceptable build quality, their PSU lineup failed to deliver mainly because of use of sub-par components and insufficient delivery of power. Post-COVID era Thunder PSUs were corrected of these complains as per the claim of the brand but such improvmenets were never verified

Thunder TGS-750 Bronze 750W 80+ Bronze DC-DC PSU

Note: This specific unit under review is simply labbelled as TGS750W (2024) pre-december model and not the Thunder (bronze series) 750W MAX POWER TGS750W post-december-2024 model. Readers are adviced caution about the PSU labels. We will thoroughly review the dec-2024 or 2025 revision of this PSU once we have this specific model in stock.

TGS-750 is fairly recent among the PSU lineup of offerings by Thunder. As per the brand’s claim this PSU features DC-DC 80+ Bronze PSU delivering 750W of power on 12V Rail. We will have to open it up and find out in the teardown of this PSU how accurate these claims are as well as what is the quality of the components used within. A few pictures are attached as below

Power Rating

Although there is no rating & specifications label on the sticker on PSU case, we were able to identify these features by looking at the supplied single-page document in the PSU box. The label reads that power supply is capable of providing 750W over 12V rail alone while the rating of 3.3V and 5V rails is 18A each or 100W combined. The PSU is 220/240V input AC-Voltage rated which we will verify by using a parimary variable transformer. We are not sure about the wide-range input support of this PSU but we’ll find out.

PSU Internals

Opening the PSU, we see standard PSU design implementation, starting from primary EMI filtering, Active PFC, NTC for In-rush Current Protection, MOV being absent, Dual GBU-8008 Rectifiers, ChengX LS series Main Capacitor rated at 105 Celsius and 390uF @ 420V, ERL-35 Transformer, DC-DC Daughter board and ChengX GR series secondary electrolytic capacitors rated at 105 Celsius 2200uF. So far PSU only stands short of heatisnks on the rectifiers but since its two rectifiers in parallel, the overheating will be lesser of a concern.

Testing at 50% load

With an overall load of 375W applied on the PSU, we start our testing by waiting for 5 minutes and then monitoring the key paramters such as voltage regulation, efficiency, ripple and temperatures. After 5 minutes we measure the efficiency to be 90% at 0.996 power factor which easily beats the 88% efficiency limit at 50% load. Voltage regulation for 12V, 5V, 5Vsb and 3.3V rails is at 12.18, 4.95, 4.98 and 3.21 Volts which are well within the limits of ATX standard. Considering the ripple, we find out the peak-peak noise over the rails to be 22mV, 22mV, 15mV, 16mV on the 12V, 5V, 5Vsb and 3.3V rails respectively.

Testing at 100% load

We apply overall load of 750W on the PSU and again, wait for 5 minutes. After passing of 5 minutes we measure efficiency to be at 86% while 80+ Bronze standard dictates that the efficiency should be 85% at maximum load. We find out the voltage regulation satisfactory and within the limits of ATX standard i-e 12.1V, 4.92V, 4.96V, 3.23V on the 12V, 5V, 5Vsb and 3.3V rails respectively. The ripple is also found out to be decent at 40mV, 28mV,13mV, 22mV on the 12V, 5V, 5Vsb and 3.3V rails respectively.

Temperatures

The highest temperature found out by means of thermal camera inside the PSU was at 71 Celsius but the tempeartures of rectifiers as well as main capacitors were considerably lower than this maximum observation

Testing at 110% load

Putting the PSU under 825W of load, we’ll verify the same paramters again after 5 minutes. We found out the PSU efficiency to be at 86% even at 110% load with power factor of 0.999. Voltage regulation still stays stable at 12.07V, 4.9V, 4.95V, and 3.22V at 12V, 5V, 5Vsb and 3.3V respectively. Ripple is found to be acceptable at 45mV, 29mV, 14mV and 22mV on the secondary rails as stated before.

Temperatures

We observed maximum temparture to be 72 Celsius at primary side at 110% load.

Loading further

Atlhough the ATX standard only dictates to verify the quality of the parameters upto 110% load but considering the notoriety of the brand, we’ll load this PSU further upto the point where it wont be able to provide anymore. So, we’ll gradually keep on increasing load and find out about the outputs near maximum tipping point. For this purpose we increase the load further to 900W and found out the PSU to be absolutely stable with regulation staying at 12.05V, 4.91, 4.95, 3.22 volts. Ripple is still staying good at 52mV, 31mV, 14mV, 22.7mV at the respective rails. Coming back to the efficiency, the PSU still held efficiency of 85% at 900W of load at power factor of 0.999.

We increase the load further to 1000W and power supply shut down after 20 seconds. Therefore, we tone down the load a bit and apply 953W of load, the PSU works absolutely fine despite this over-power failure.

Temperatures at 900W load

Highest temperature at parimary side is found to be 83 Celsius

Tempeartures at 953W load

Highest temperature at primary side is observed at 87 Celsius

Wide Range Input Support

We found the power supply to be working in voltage ranges of 180V AC – 270V AC and hence we accept this feature to be wide-range input supported PSU.

Our Verdict

Despite the skepticism and shaming going around on the internet about Thunder’s power supply, although it may be true for the 500/550W variants, the TGS-750W variant we tested raised triumphant over the troll campaign, with nothing held back in the performance. Although absense of rectifier heatsink would irk some people but presence of two 8A rectifiers makes maximum power pass through of 1600W which is far above 750W of rated power. Our initial glance at EMI filtering and rather smaller appearance of APFC components may suggest that the OEM held back in this department but we didn’t find any anomalies in the perofrmance of PSU that would point out towards such compromises.

Pricing & Usage Criteria

Thunder TGS-750W 80+ Bronze is cheapest among the DC-DC PSUs and being sold in the market in price range of 11,000 RS – 12,500 RS which is considered well affordable considering that 650W PSUs are being sold at this price. Regarding price-to-performance ratio, there is currently no contest to this PSU in the market at this price. We recommend this PSU with PC Builds featuring GPUs upto RX 7800 XT with AMD 90W max PPT CPUs such as the 65W TDP lineup of Ryzens. This PSU holds well even for the loading beyond the 100% load and that too with acceptable tempeartures to worry less about the capacitor ageing.

Review Video

Thunder TGS-750W Automatic Test Report