The Hydro G Pro with 850 W capacity is of excellent build quality, but for its high price, its overall performance is not high enough to face the competition. The popular Corsair RM750x scores 7.6% higher overall performance, while the Seasonic Focus Plus Gold is also 6.96% ahead. At 7.9%, the Super Flower SF850-F14HG is even further ahead.

It is a great shame to see a platform with so many good components fail to keep up with designs that in the majority of cases use inferior parts. FSP's engineers didn't come up with the best design, and to make matters worse, they tuned the fan-speed profile too aggressively. Push this unit hard and you will need earplugs to cope with the noise at high operating temperatures. With 33.54 dB(A) overall noise output, the HG2-850 might not be far removed from the Seasonic Focus Plus Gold (32.98 dB[A]), but the noise output gap to the Corsair RM850x (15.79 dB[A]) is huge.

This new Hydro G Pro 850 W model needs higher performance and a lower price to effectively face the competition. Reducing the price might be viable at some point, but for improved performance, hardware changes are required, so this is not going to be easy. Besides a more relaxed fan-speed profile, I would want to see properly configured overcurrent triggering points on the minor rails. The things I liked with this unit, aside from its topnotch build quality, are the top bulk cap and Protechnic Electric fan, good transient response at +12V, highly efficient 5VSB rail (with 115V mainly), selectable semi-passive operation, and proper distance between peripheral connectors.