It is confirmed. OCZ made a strong come back into the high-end PSU category with the release of the ZX series. The smallest member of the ZX series exhibited high efficiency through out 20-100% load range, its voltage regulation was within 3% for all major rails and handled full power even after we cranked up the temperature inside our hot box. On top of that it managed to pass all of our very difficult Advanced Transient Response tests. In addition it is backed up with 5-years of OCZ's powerswap warranty and it has a great deal of SATA/peripheral connectors along with two EPS and four PCIe ones, with the last being on a separate cable each. The major and somehow silly omission in this PSU is the lack of the MOV in its transient filtering stage. Unfortunately this is something that applies to all ZX series models so they are unprotected against dangerous spikes coming from the power grid. We really can't understand how in the world a manufacturer chooses to sacrifice such a cheap but crucial component in a high-end PSU series. Also the price of ZX 850W is a little steep and puts it against powerful opponents like the Corsair AX850 and the Seasonic X-750, both with Gold efficiency, fully modular and with very high quality/workmanship. To give you an idea of the pricing that OCZ chose for the ZX 850W: at the time of this review the ZX 1000W was sold for only 10$ more on Newegg.

To sum up, ZX 850W is a good and solid performer and it will easily power a system with two high-end VGAs installed along with a dozen of a peripheral devices. Its bigger drawback is the high price. If it was 30-40$ cheaper then it could claim a much bigger market share from its opponents, but right now at 179.99$ it faces really hard competition.