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Gigabyte 1000GM PG5 1000W power supply review: Impressive Platinum-level efficiency with T-Guard thermal protection
Built by HEC, the Gigabyte Gaming 1000GM PG5 delivers Platinum-level efficiency that exceeds the Gold badge on its box, average electrical performance for its class, all-Japanese capacitors, and a good balance between temperatures and noise. T-Guard adds real peace of mind for high-end GPU owners. It gets loud when hot and pushed hard, but with a ten-year warranty and a $170 price, it is a sensible choice.
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Gigabyte Technology hardly needs an introduction to anyone who has built a PC in the last three decades. Founded in Taipei in 1986, the company grew into one of the largest motherboard and graphics card manufacturers in the world, and its AORUS brand has become a fixture of the enthusiast market. Power supplies are a comparatively recent and more modest part of its business. Like nearly every PC brand, Gigabyte does not manufacture its own PSUs. Instead, it sources platforms from established OEMs and sells them under its UD, P-series and AORUS lines. The results have been uneven over the years, with some very good units and a few that left a lot to be desired, so the OEM and the target audience behind each model matters more than the badge on the box.
The Gaming GM PG5 series is Gigabyte's newest attempt to cover the upper mainstream, and the 1000W model in review today is something of a spiritual successor to the popular UD1000GM PG5. We look closer to determine how it ranks among our best power supplies list. It is built by HEC, a long-established Taiwanese OEM. It is fully compliant with the ATX 3.1 and PCIe 5.1 design guides and comes with a native 12V-2x6 connector, a 135 mm fluid dynamic bearing fan, and (according to Gigabyte) 100% Japanese capacitors.
The headline feature, though, is T-Guard, a thermal monitoring system for the 12V-2x6 connector that can cut power to the graphics card if the connector starts overheating. The T-Guard signifies Gigabyte’s proposed solution to the known PCIe 5.1 connector overheating problem that almost every manufacturer has been trying to implement a defense against. Curiously, Gigabyte markets the unit with 80 PLUS Gold logos, even though it has received Platinum certifications from both CLEAResult (80 PLUS) and Cybenetics. It is also available in white as the 1000GM PG5 ICE, comes with a ten-year warranty, and retails for $170 at the time of this review.
The Gaming 1000GM PG5 arrives in a black and orange cardboard box with a large render of the unit on the front, next to the model name and a bold orange "1000W" print. A row of small icons along the bottom highlights the ATX 3.1 and PCIe 5.1 compatibility, the fully modular design, the Japanese capacitors, the smart fan, and T-Guard, while an 80 PLUS Gold badge sits at the top right corner. It is a flashy, gaming-oriented design, which is fitting given the name of the series.
The bundle is very basic. Other than the unit itself, we only found the AC power cord, four black cable ties, and a multilingual user manual. There are no Velcro straps and no cable combs. Strangely, there were not even mounting screws in our sample's box. For a $170 1000W unit, that is on the stingy side of things, although it hardly matters for the actual quality of the product, and most builders probably already have a drawer full of these things.
All of the cables are modular, including the 24-pin ATX cable. Gigabyte went with black, flat "embossed" cables, where every wire is individually insulated, but the wires are bound together into a ribbon. They are flexible and easy to route, and they look considerably better than plain flat cables. The single native 12V-2x6 cable has a dual-color connector, with a light grey front section that makes a partially seated plug easy to spot, and it is rated for 600W.
The chassis of the Gaming 1000GM PG5 measures 150 x 150 x 86 mm (L