Corsair TX850W power supply
Category : PSUs
Published by Jean-Luc Hadey on 05.02.09
Meanwhile Corsair was able to establish in the high-end power supply market. With the TX850W they present a power supply that comes with a +12V rail that can cope with a massive 70 A therefore it is called a single rail PSU. Furthermore the efficieny should be above 80 percent and life expectancy is about 100'000 hours.
On the following pages you can read about the strenghts and weaknesses of Corsairs TX850W.
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Technical details and features
As you would have imagined the new Corsair TX850W power supply is well built.
The Corsair TX850W is being cooled by a very silent 120 mm fan. If you're looking for a modular cable management then it is in vain. What you get are a lot of connectors to wire even an actual high-end gaming PC. Also the cables flexibility is good and combined with their lenght of 63 cm you'll be able to connect components to the power even in a big tower. Corsair also kept the ATX standard whil building the TX850W. This means that the PSU is compact and you can put it into every ATX compatible case.
The power supply is prepared to power PCI-express graphic cards in CrossFire or SLI moode. Therefore you get four 6+2 pin PCI-E power connectors.
Power | |
| AC Input | 1000-240V ~ 12A 50/60Hz |
| Total power | 850 Watt |
| Combined power (+12 Volt) | 840 Watt |
| Combined power (+3,3 und +5 Volt) | 180 Watt |
Currents | |
| +3.3V | 30A |
| +5.0V | 30A |
| +12V1 | 70A |
| -12V | 0.8A |
| +5 Volt Standby | 3A |
Connectors and fan | |
| 8 x S-ATA | |
| 8 x 4 Pin | |
| 2 x Floppy | |
| 4 x 6+2 Pin PCI-E | |
| 1 xEPS/ATX12V 8-4 Pin | |
| 1 x 20/24 Pin Mainboard | |
| 1 x | |
| OVP (Over Voltage Protection) | |
| UVP (Under Voltage Protection) | |
| OTP (Over Temperatur Protection) | |
| SCP (Short Circuit Protection) | |
| OCP (Over Current Protection) | |
| Active PFC (99%). | |
| ATX12V v2.2, undATX12V 2.01 support | |
| Dimensions B x H x T:150 x 86 x 160 mm | |
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Test system and procedure
| Mainboard | ASUS P6T Deluxe |
| CPU | Intel i7 920 |
| Graphic card | 2 x ATI Radeon 4870 X2 |
| Memory | Corsair XMS3 DDR3-1600MHz |
| Hard disk | 1 x Western Digital RE16 160GB 1 x Intel® X25-M SATA Solid-State Drive 80GB (2.5") |
| Power supply | Corsair TX850W |
| Drive | 1 x Plextor 712A |
| Operating system | Vista SP1 |
To generate additional load on the +12V rail we use a total of eight halogen bulb consuming 40 Watts each. These bulbs make it also possible to estimate the effeciency of the power supply tested. Therefore you can measure the wattage drawn from the wall outlet before and after plugging the bulb in. Afterwards you can estimate the efficiency in percent.
We tested the power supply under idle and load condition. Therefore we used SiSoftSandras brun-in module and 3DMarkVanatage simultaneously as well as we copied 10 GByte of data from every hard disk in the system.
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Testresults
| Circuit | Idle | Load |
| 12V-1 | 12.08 | 12.01 |
| 5.00 Volt | 5.01 Volt | 4.98 Volt |
| 3.30 Volt | 3.33 Volt | 3.29 Volt |
The Corsair TX850W is able to provide our test system with power reliably even when it is overclocked and when we attach additional consumers.
| Power consumption, off | 10.9 Watt |
| Power consumption Idle (CPU Default 2.66 GHz, VCore 1.25V) | 290 Watt |
| Power consumption Load (CPU Default 2.66 GHz, VCore 1.25V) | 377 Watt |
| Power consumption Idle (CPU @ 4.2GHZ VCore 1.50V) | 388 Watt |
| Power consumption Load (CPU @ 4.2GHZ VCore 1.50V) | 557 Watt |
| Efficiency | 82.3 % |
With an efficiency of 81 percent you can find the TX850W in the league of the 80+ certified power supplies.
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Conclusion
Recent technics, high-class components, stability, efficiency and quiet running, that's where the Corsair TX850W scores. Furthermore the the TX850W is built within the ATX standard and therefore it will fit into every ATX case.
The efficiency of 82 percent is between good and very good. Further even under high load the different rails are stable and there is only less fluctuation.
Regarding the size of the TX850W Corsair stays within the ATX norm and it is therefore possible to put this PSU into every ATX case without encountering problems relating to the size.
Because of the above mentioned facts we can recommend the Corsair TX850W to any PC ethusiast.
We thank Corsair Co. for providing us with this test sample.
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Author: jl.hadey@ocaholic.ch
Revised by: m.buechel@ocaholic.ch