Phanteks' Revolt PSU Revolts Against Cables, Doesn't Come With Them

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Customers must buy custom cables separately.

Phanteks Revolt PSUs
(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

Even if you buy one of the best power supplies, you may not like the cables that come in the box. To deal with the problem, you can either buy extension cables or look for custom cables that work with your particular make and model of PSU. 

But if you're going to hate the pack-in cables anyway, why not just buy them separately? That's the philosophy behind the new Phanteks revolt line of power supplies that the company has introduced at Computex 2023.

Available in capacities ranging from 1,000 to 1,600 watts, the Revolts are based on Seasonic's Vertex platform and meet all ATX 3.0 specifications. But to get the cables, you'll need to buy them from Cablemod, a company that specializes in custom power supply cabling.

Cablemod has a custom configurator that lets you choose exactly which cables you want, their color and their style. The company will also be selling bundles targeted at the Revolt line.

Phanteks Revolt PSUs

(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

However, it's important to note that Cablemod isn't exactly cheap. When we priced out four cables -- a 24-pin ATX, 8-pin EPS, dual-SATA and 8 pin PCIe -- using the configurator, the cost was $99 and you probably need more cables than that. 

Phanteks says that, for people who can't or don't want to buy from Cablemod, it will sell two cable kits: a PCIe Gen 5 kit for $79 and a complete kit for $179. That's without the PSU.

The power supplies themselves will carry MSRPs of $199, $249 and $399 for the 1,000, 1,200 and 1,600 watt units respectively. The 1,000 and 1,200 watt units will come in black or white while the 1,600 watt one will only be available in black. All three will be available in August. 

When you do the math, the Revolt seems pretty expensive. You can get an ATX 3.0 and PCIe 5.0 compliant 1,000-watt power supply for less than $200 today from reputable companies like Corsair and MSI and those come with all the cables in the box. 

For the entry-level Revolt, you'll likely be spending over $300 to get there (we don't know exactly how much Cablemod will charge for its cheapest kit). But you will get the cables you want.

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Matt Safford
Matt Safford

After a rough start with the Mattel Aquarius as a child, Matt built his first PC in the late 1990s and ventured into mild PC modding in the early 2000s. He’s spent the last 15 years covering emerging technology for Smithsonian, Popular Science, and Consumer Reports, while testing components and PCs for Computer Shopper, PCMag and Digital Trends.

6 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Darkbreeze
    I cannot see them selling many, or any, of these at those prices PLUS having to buy an additional cable set for 100-200 dollars. It might be a decent enough idea if they reduced the cost of the power supply itself by whatever amount is normally invested into the cable set if it had been included but it does not look like they have done that here. Just looking to double dip. Seems like Phanteks has really gone downhill over the last few years and made a lot of really poor manufacturing and retail decisions. Shame, because they used to have mostly top notch products.
    Reply
  • TechieTwo
    I'll stick with a standard high quality Seasonic PSU with normal cables.
    Reply
  • Sleepy_Hollowed
    What's next, renting cables?

    This is insane.
    Reply
  • newtechldtech
    Meh ... Most cables that come with the power supplies are very cheap cables . so actually it only benefit the manufacturer to remove them when he produces tons of units.
    Reply
  • 2Be_or_Not2Be
    I will note that custom colored PSU cables aren't cheap, so I can see the higher price for the cables as CableMod/et al want a profit on those cables. But if Phanteks is shipping w/o cables, then they need to have a lower price on those PSUs.
    Reply
  • Darkbreeze
    Nothing against anybody here, but factually some of the information is wrong. Most of the cable sets that come WITH any high quality power supply are usually thicker gauge and better quality than what normally comes with prebuilt sleeved cable sets or aftermarket sets. Not that there are not good quality aftermarket sleeved and non-sleeved sets out there, because there are, but you need to pay attention to what you are ordering because it's not a given.

    Main point being when I hear somebody say that the cables that come with most power supplies, unless we are talking about cheap quality power supplies in which case getting cheap cables is a given since nobody is going to include quality cables with a cheap PSU, it's evident to me they really aren't familiar with the relevant aspects of high quality power supplies. There is also the additional fact that you REALLY need to be sure you are getting a set made specifically for the PSU in question since they are not all going to have the same pinouts at the PSU end of the cables. Also, it's a well known fact that many of these factory cables come with additional capacitors inline that further reduce ripple and noise and the vast majority of sleeved or aftermarket cables will lack those inline caps so hopefully it's a unit that already has mythical ripple and noise levels so that inline caps are not a necessity or even desirable benefit in the first place.

    Many ways that not including the correct cables with the power supply could go wrong, but again, I don't really think it's a problem because I'm betting this is a product that will die a fairly rapid death on the market due to a lack of sales.
    Reply