| #868 - Tagan ITZ 1300w Power Supply |
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| Written by Zach Jeffers | ||||||
| Sunday, 09 September 2007 | ||||||
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The ITZ Tour: As already stated, the Tagan ITZ series power supplies have a very vibrant and beautiful Blue chrome finish. These power supplies attract finger prints like a fly to your picnic lunch. If you are installing this PSU into a windowed case, keep a clean rag around before you close’er’up.  On the right hand side, there is a full length classification label applied with all the specs and such for the power supply. Lucky for most, this is hidden behind a side panel and out of view. On the left hand side, the ITZ features a full length, brushed aluminum, “PSU Badge” (yeah, that’s right; I claim creation of the term). As much as a window would look killer right here, I think that the badge looks very classy. As is on the right hand side, there is a patterned ventilation area above the labels, these aid in the circulation of the cool air from the case through the unit and out the back.    At the back of the ITZ 1300w power supply is a standard 80mm exhaust fan, power plug and the power switch. You will notice that the power switch has a moisture proof rubber surround. I honestly do not know what purpose this serves as the fan and power plug are still exposed, but it still looks cool! At the front of the unit you find a 80mm intake fan, six ventilation slits and the hardwired power leads.  
With most power supplies that have hardwired power leads, there is a single zip-tie located internal to the unit’s casing to hold the cables together and prevent separation of the soldering joints on the PCB. With the ITZ series, Tagan has also included a second tie on the outside of the unit to aid in retention as these units have a large number of power leads. You can see from this picture that Tagan has wrapped the pass through area with a plastic collar to prevent the slicing of the mesh and shielded cables.  The ITZ series of power supplies have a large collection of power leads and there is no sparing on the length either! With these leads installed inside of an empty mid-tower case, you kind of get the feeling that you should really have a full tower case if buying this power supply.  
The ITZ power supply comes with a standard 20+4 pin motherboard power lead, an eight pin motherboard power lead (for additional CPUs) and a standard four pin motherboard power lead (not pictured). You can see that these leads feature the black mesh. Continuing the tradition of including another great feature, Tagan has included a ground wire to be installed on the case by a case screw. This grounding helps reduce static noise within the power supply’s internal grid.  
With 1300 watts behind the wheel of this unit, you assume it will be powering at least two high end video cards. Tagan does not disappoint in this area. They have included four graphics card leads. Each of these leads are shielded, not meshed. Each lead features a REMI wart to help reduce EMI emissions. Additionally, two of the graphics leads feature a +2-pin configuration for use with newer, larger graphics cards like the x2900XT. Tagan doesn’t stop with four leads just for your graphics. They also include two six-pin leads for physic cards! Now this is puzzling as the current stream of physics cards utilize the four-pin Molex form factor. Maybe Tagan knows something we don’t!  
Remember those SATA to four-pin Molex adapters? The reason for these is that the Tagan ITZ 1300 watt power supply comes with only six four-pin Molex connectors on two leads. You say, “What do you mean ‘only’ Zach?” Well, when you compare these six Molex connectors to the total of twelve SATA power connections on three leads, it would seem as if the six Molex connectors are a fading technology! With the number of SATA hard drives in the market far out-numbering the older EIDE technology, it’s no wonder that there are more SATA connections here. The sheer number of SATA connections clues you in on the payload Tagan expects this power supply to handle. Unfortunately our test lab does not have access to twelve SATA drives all at once to test with. Maybe next time ;) |
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