Ultra High-End PSU Roundup

Tagan ITZ 1300W


Tagan is not a newcomer in the market even, though it might be a new name for some. Tagan has existed for quite a few years, and they started life in Germany with roots tracing to a company called Maxpoint. The story of Maxpoint is indeed a wild one. Maxpoint started as a branch office from Enermax in Hamburg. After several turbulent disagreements, one of the shareholders bought Enermax out and started Maxpoint as a separate company. In the beginning they functioned as a distributor for PC parts, still including Enermax power supplies.

The competition in the market was growing steadily since there was another former colleague from Maxpoint who started another brand called "Be quiet!" A better name was needed, and thus Tagan came into being. Tagan has experienced ups and downs, but today after ~7 years of existence we can still see that Tagan is producing with renowned Topower. Topower had its brightest years several years back and unfortunately lost a lot of customers due to several problems in terms of quality and production. In our list of reviewed power supplies, we have only seen Tagan still sourcing from Topower.


Last year Tagan USA was established to get into the US market. With the ITZ series Tagan is introducing a very new approach to power supplies since it's the first time the company is using another color than black. With ITZ Tagan is actually coming back to its rightful place in the high-end business since there have been several complications with former product lines in other markets. Tagan USA sent us the 1300W version to show what they're capable of achieving. For the USA Tagan teamed up with the company ABS (parent company of Newegg) and you will find the ABS logo on almost every corner of the PSU. The label states 20A for each of the six 12V rails with a combined power of 92A - again, that's quite a load to come up with!

The unit comes wrapped up in a bubble bag with all the necessary accessories. There are cable ties, a Molex to floppy adapter, screws, and the power cord attached in the box. As already mentioned this power supply comes in a shiny blue color mirror finish. Not pictured are the front and sides; the front of the unit has an 80mm fan (with ABS logo in the center) and the side has the label and above it there are many small holes punched in the metal. We will come back to their function a little later. The rear also has an 80mm fan installed - along with the power socket and a huge power switch - which functions in a push-pull configuration. Since we got a Topower handpicked sample we still have the Topower sample number on the case and red dots for measuring the fan speed.

Everything about the Cables



The power supply definitely has the largest amount of cables we have seen so far. Not only do we have four 6-pin PEG connectors but we also get two additional 8-pin PEG connectors on separate cable harnesses. That's fewer PEG connections than the Cooler Master, but Tagan compensates in other ways. The PEG connections are accompanied by twelve SATA connectors on three harnesses and seven Molex connectors on three harnesses. We actually ran out of space on our cable graphic and had to make the best out of it. All cables are sleeved and the PEG cable harnesses are even sleeved with an aluminum mesh with rubber hose. In the end of each PEG cable is a ferrite coil to minimize ripple on the rails.



Once we had this very long power supply open we recognized the inside immediately. We have seen this design already one year ago in the first revision of Topower which didn't perform well at all. We can only hope that this one is a much higher revision and that all the problems from a year ago have been solved. Just to be safe, though, we'll keep a fire extinguisher handy during testing....

Forgetting for a moment our previous bad experience, the inside is very packed since we have one component after another and two huge flower-shaped heat sinks in the middle of it. There is nothing easily visible on the PCB and we could hardly make out the manufacturers of the components. The fans are located directly beside the heat sinks. This might look bad for some at first sight but the heat sinks have actually a round opening going horizontal through it so the air is guided easily through the power supply. Note also that the fan which is pulling the out of the PSU is stronger than the one pushing in. This means that there is more air pulled out than pushed in. Now the openings on the sides come into play because the air which is pulled out can also enter through the side openings. In theory, this helps to provide more fresh air to components besides the ones near the intake fan. On the secondary we had no chance to pull any cable beside to have a look at the components behind it. Everything is tight here and can't even be budged a millimeter without risking damage to the PSU internals.