A Detailed Look
The Corsair HX850 Platinum power supply enclosure is painted with a semi-gloss black finish and measures 180mm (7.1”) deep. The back panel includes an AC receptacle, main power On-Off switch and open honey-comb grill.
The power supply uses a high-quality Corsair labelled 135mm, seven blade fan on the bottom for cooling. The fan (NR135P) is rated for 0.22A at 12 VDC and uses a Fluid Dynamic Bearing (FDB) for quiet operation and long life. The HX Series power supplies all feature Corsair’s ZeroRPM mode for fanless operation at low output power levels.
The HX850 front panel has thirteen modular cable connectors that are nicely labelled and keyed so you don’t inadvertently plug a cable into the wrong connector. The small switch on the left allows selecting either Single or Multiple +12V rail output mode.
The PSU comes with a good selection of all modular cables. All of the main power cables are sleeved while the peripheral device cables are the flat ribbon-style. Our only minor quibble here is having two PCI-E connectors daisy-chained onto one cable.
Under the Hood
Here are a few pictures showing the layout and components inside the new Corsair HX850 power supply. Corsair is using Channel Well Technology (CWT) as the OEM for the HX Series.
The HX850 Platinum features a modern LLC resonant circuit design with DC-to-DC converters for high efficiency operation. The layout of components is clean while the soldering appears to be good. All of the capacitors used inside the PSU are high-quality Japanese made electrolytic and solid polymer caps rated for 105°C. For example, the HX850 uses two Nippon Chemi-Con KMW bulk capacitors rated for 470uF, 400V and 105°C.
PSU reviews are immensely
PSU reviews are immensely boring.
While the number of
While the number of spectacular PSU failures has markedly decreased, reviews such as this excellent example are incredibly important when making purchasing decisions. Have a little respect for the work that Lee has put into this review.
Maybe reviewers could spice
Maybe reviewers could spice up the format by testing PSUs to the point of failure. I would like to see what it takes to physically destroy these things. Can one take a 850W PSU to 1000W? What happens if I short an active power cable? What happens to thermals without the fan active? Can I add a waterblock to it in a custom cooling loop? There are so many interesting questions.
Virtually all enthusiast
Virtually all enthusiast grade PSUs have built in safety circuits that are designed to protect the PSU from catastrophic failure. I have only had one PSU actually explode (fireball, sparks and smoke) during testing over the last fifteen years. Over Current protection or Over Power protection should shut the PSU down if too heavy a load is applied to a particular rail or the total output power is exceeded. Short circuit protection should shut it down if a short occurs on one of the outputs. And if the cooling fan fails, Over Temperature protection should shut the PSU down before it self destructs. Boring but safe!
And water-cooling a PSU is possible (although maybe not practical). I have done this in the past by attaching several custom made water blocks to the PSU's existing aluminum heat sinks. I chose a PSU that was designed to operate fanless, removed the cover and attached three custom water blocks. Use your imagination… 🙂
Maybe I missed it but I read
Maybe I missed it but I read through the review and didn’t see any info about what the 12v real switch actually does other then switching between single rail and multi rail mode.
Does this have any impact at all on the operation? Is effeciency affected? What kind of scenarios exist in which that feature is even useful? I can’t really think of one, although I’m not a die-hard PSU junkie.