The PSU

Zalman has painted their power supply with a very glossy, highly reflective black paint. The ZM850-HP is also longer than the ATX standard PSU, exact length is 21 cm.


On the back you have a power LED which lights up red when power is connected and green when the unit is turned on. What I really miss here is a power off switch. We will see later that there is plenty of space near the back so I can't imagine why this was left out, except for cost saving reasons.


Zalman uses a single 140 mm fan is running extremely quiet.


On the back you fan find the modular power connectors and also a switch called "5Vsb Noise Filter", when enabled it will eliminate high frequency noise while the system is in standby mode. I am not sure why you would ever want to turn this feature off?


A number of cables are fixed to the PSU like the ATX power cable, the +12V motherboard power supply, two PCI-Express power cables, a few SATA and 5.25" power connectors. Basically this means that you can use the PSU without any of the extra modular cables in most normal systems. This sounds like a good compromise between having a large number of cables and connectors available and being able to keep your case inside nearly organized.


The motherboard connector can be used as both 20 pin or 24 pin connector. It can not be clipped together, so you have to press the plugs with your fingers when inserting the power cables in the socket. The orange sticker says that the 4 pin connector is not a 4 pin motherboard CPU power connector .. duh.


As 8-pin CPU power connector two 4 pin connectors are used that are part of the same cable. They can't be clipped together either.


Here we see one of the two 6+2 Pin PCI-E video card power connectors that are fixed to the PSU. Being able to move the two extra pins out of the way will be handy when your video card has limited space around the power connector. Two additional 6 Pin connectors are available on seperate modular cables.


The shiny glossy paint is a finger print magnet, if you have a window and plan to show off your case inside you have to wipe them off after installation, which is possible using your bare hands.