Montech is a fairly new player in the PC power and cooling market. The Taiwanese company first appeared in 2016 and quickly made its presence international.Montec now focuses on designing and manufacturing PC cases, power supply units (PSUs), and CPU coolers. The company’s core philosophy was to be competitively priced, so most of its products were aimed at the high-volume, mainstream market.
Recently, in order to attract gamers and enthusiasts, Montech has started releasing high-end and top-tier products without shyness. I looked at the Century Gold 650W a while ago. This is an interesting high quality PSU with a good balance of quality, performance and value.
Entering 2023, the company takes a giant leap and releases the new Titan Gold PSU series. Titan Gold consists of high-powered units designed for powerful gaming systems, an entirely new market segment for the company. Today’s review takes a closer look at the most powerful unit in the series, the Titan Gold 1200W PSU. In addition to being a quality unit in its own right, Titan Gold has advantages in the form of his ATX 3.0 compliance, and Montech says he’s one of the clubs that’s still pretty exclusive to companies with ATX 3.0 units available. have become a member.
| Montec Titan Gold 1200W Power Specifications (Rated @ 50 °C) |
|||||
| rail | +3.3V | +5V | +12V | +5 Vsb | -12V |
| Maximum output | 22A | 22A | 100A | 3A | 0.3A |
| 120W | 1200W | 15W | 3.6W | ||
| total | 1200W | ||||
| AC input | AC100-240V, 50-60Hz | ||||
| Manufacturer’s suggested retail price | $220 | ||||
packing and bundling
Montech delivers the Titan Gold 1200W unit in a sturdy cardboard box. The box artwork is simplistic and focuses on a photo of the PSU itself, but the sides and back of the box have plenty of information about the PSU’s specifications and certifications.
Inside the Montech Titan Gold package, only the basic items for mounting the PSU are included, only a power cord and four mounting screws are provided. No cable ties, straps or other accessories.
The Titan Gold 1200W ATX 3.0 PSU has a fully modular design, allowing you to detach all DC power cables including the 24-pin ATX connector. Most cables have individually sleeved black wires and black connectors, but the ATX 24-pin and 16-pin PCIe 5.0 cables consist of black wires bundled inside a nylon sleeve. The weird thing here is that one of the cables only has one connector, so there are 5 PCIe connectors.
| Montec Titan Gold 1200W | ||
| connector type | hardwired | base unit |
| ATX 24 pin | – | 1 |
| EPS 4+4 pin | – | 2 |
| EPS 8 pin | – | – |
| PCIE 5.0 | – | 1 |
| PCI-E 8 pin | – | Five |
| SATA | – | 12 |
| Molex | – | Four |
| floppy | – | 1 |
Montech Titan Gold 1200W ATX 3.0 PSU
exterior
Contrary to what you’d expect from a company looking to minimize costs, Montech has actually invested some resources into making the Titan Gold 1200W PSU visually appealing. The chassis cover is punched to create a natural finger guard with the image of the company’s logo. The entire PSU is sprayed with a matte black paint that resists fingerprints, but is easily chipped if mishandled. At 160mm long, it’s 20mm longer than the ATX standard stipulates. However, we do not anticipate compatibility issues with modern cases intended to house above-average PCs.
A sticker with the unit’s electrical certifications and specifications covers most of the top of the PSU. About a quarter of the sticker is blue, which can draw unwanted attention when viewed through a windowed side panel. Both sides of the unit are embossed with the company logo.
At the back of the unit, right next to the AC power connector and basic on/off switch, is a latching push button that controls the “Smart Zero Fan Mode”. As the name suggests, this mode allows passive operation when the PSU is under light load. This is a technique frequently applied by many manufacturers these days. When disabled, the fan will continue to spin as long as the PSU is powered on, but its speed will still be thermally controlled.
The front of the unit has numerous connectors for modular cables. Legend and company logo are printed on the chassis. A sticker with the serial number of the main unit is also included.
internal design
Montech uses a 135 mm fan for the cooling needs of the Titan Gold 1200W PSU. The fan is made by Hong Hua, a popular manufacturer among PC PSU OEMs. It has a Fluid Dynamic Bearing (FDB) engine for quiet operation and long life, but has a very high top speed of 2300 RPM.
The OEM behind the Titan Gold 1200W PSU is Channel-Well Technologies (CWT). That’s no big surprise, considering Montech has worked with them on some better products, including the Century Gold 650W PSU. months ago. What’s surprising here is that for review he didn’t know this when he solicited the PSU, but the Titan Gold 1200W uses the same platform as his MSI MPG A1000G which he recently reviewed . This is an upgraded version of CWT’s most popular platform, tweaked to add ATX 3.0 support. So this gives us another look at his CTW’s platform running at a higher wattage.
Overall, the Titan Gold 1200W design is based on a proven and relatively simple topology. The filtering stage is typical, with 4 Y capacitors, 2 X capacitors, and 2 filtering inductors followed directly by 2 rectifier bridges on a large heatsink. The next long heatsink holds the active APFC components. Two very large capacitors, 450V/680μF from Nippon Chemi-Con and 420V/470μF from Rubycon, and a large filtering inductor. The total capacitance of the circuit is very large and will undoubtedly create a large inrush current that can trip a small or fast circuit breaker.
Moving on to the primary of the main transformer, there are two transistors on a medium heatsink forming a typical half-bridge LLC inverter circuit. The core of the secondary side is on a vertical daughterboard that is home to eight power transistors that convert the output of the transformer to his PSU’s main DC output. The 3.3V and 5V lines are generated through a DC-DC conversion circuit on its own vertical daughterboard. All secondary capacitors are made by Nippon Chemi-Con and Nichicon.
