Specifications

Efficiency is officially Bronze; however, as we saw with the Power Zone 1000 W, be quiet! was rather conservative with the efficiency certification they acquired. We still don't understand why since the aforementioned unit could easily clear the Gold certification, and we are pretty sure the same will apply to the 850 W unit. Contrary to the efficiency certification, its other characteristics are topnotch since it features a fully modular cabling design, is Haswell ready, comes equipped with all available protection features, and has a maximum operating temperature of 50°C, which is in line with the ATX specification. be quiet! even equipped the unit with a high quality Fluid Dynamic Bearings (FDB) fan. FDB fans are considered the best in the industry. The PSU is quite long at 17.5 cm; however, every ATX-compliant chassis will house it without any problems, and it is, as you can see, listed as ATX v2.4 compatible, which is the most recent ATX spec. Its price looks and is very high for a Bronze unit, at least on papers, while the provided warranty is long enough at five years.

The unit can deliver most of its power on the +12V rail alone, and the minor rails are too strong for today's PCs since they hardly utilize them. The 5VSB rail can deliver enough power to easily handle any system this PSU will have to power.

Cables & Connectors, Power Distribution

There are enough connectors for the capacity of this unit; however, we have seen several 850 W units with six PCIe connectors. Cable length is adequate and the distance among connectors is sufficiently large; some might even prefer SATA connectors that are a little closer to one another.

The 24-pin ATX connector is mostly equipped with 18AWG wires, though we spotted some 20AWG and very few 22AWG wires. The latter are used for voltage sense purposes, hence their smaller thickness. The EPS and PCIe connectors use thicker 16AWG gauges, while all others use standard 18AWG wires.

Since this PSU features a single +12V rail, we have nothing to comment on when it comes to its power distribution.