Date: March 7th, 2007
Article by: Joe Anderson (Hardware Reviewer)
Edited by: Nathan Glentworth (Owner / Head Editor)
Product was submitted by: Xclio
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PRODUCT PICTORIAL AND WALKTHROUGH
Contrasting with the fancy-schmancy packaging, the PSU itself is rather plain. The finish is matte-black and matches the 140mm, 11-blade fan nicely. The grill is similar in color, in keeping with the monochromatic theme. The 850W is also relatively compact, measuring in at 6.25” x 6” x 3”.
Owing to its input control circuitry, the 850W has no manual voltage switch. It does, however, have a mysterious LED positioned next to the power socket. We'll have to wait and see what this LED indicates, as it's not mentioned on the website or in the manual. The honeycomb perforations provide ample open area to exhaust cooling air from the 140mm fan.
The power cables exit the PSU through a rectangular hole. I'd really like to see some protection for the wires here, especially when most of them are not sleeved. Granted, this probably won't be an issue, but a short here could be catastrophic.
Now, let's take a look at the connectors.
The main ATX motherboard connector has the now common 20/24-pin feature, allowing the user to use this PSU on 20-pin boards by removing the outermost section of the connector. Similarly, auxiliary +12V mobo power can be supplied to boards with 4- or 8-pin connectors. Once confined to the server realm, 8-pin (EPS) connectors are showing up on mainstream boards with increasing frequency. These cables are fully sleeved with a black mesh material secured with heatshrink.
The remaining cables are only sleeved from the PSU to the first connector. The two peripheral cables have a total of eight 4-pin and a single floppy connector.
Eight SATA connectors are divided equally between two cables.
