Cooler Master V850 SFX Gold WHITE Edition 850W Power Supply Review

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Transient Testing

For those of you that are curious as to some of the reasoning and equipment behind our PSU testing program here at TheFPSReview, we have put together an introduction for you that shares a lot of the behind-the-scenes of the program. This program is based on what the author developed at [H]ardOCP and utilizes the equipment bequeathed to the author by Kyle Bennett. The testing we are conducting today is exactly as described in that document and will continue with our Transient Testing.

Transient Test 1

Loaded/Unloaded

12v/5v

Test #1 is equal to approximately 25% of the rated capacity of the Cooler Master V850 SFX GOLD WHITE at 45c. This makes Test #1 equal to 221W by loading the 12v rail to 16a, the 5v rail to 2a, the 3.3v rail to 1a, the +5vsb to 2a, and the -12v to 0.3a before the addition of the transient load. The results of Test #1 show a ~320mV drop on the 12v rail and ~45mV drop on the 5v rail when each is directly loaded. At the same time that the load was being triggered on the 12v rail, the 5v rail measured a ~40mV drop.

Transient Test 2

Loaded/Unloaded

12v/5v

Test #2 is equal to approximately 50% of the rated capacity of the Cooler Master V850 SFX GOLD WHITE at 45c. This makes Test #2 equal to 429W by loading the 12v rail to 32a, the 5v rail to 4a, the 3.3v rail to 3a, the +5vsb to 2a, and the -12v to 0.3a before the addition of the transient load. The results of Test #2 show a ~340mV drop on the 12v rail and ~50mV drop on the 5v rail when each is directly loaded. At the same time that the load was being triggered on the 12v rail, the 5v rail measured a ~45mV drop.

Transient Load Testing Summary

The Transient Load Tests results for the Cooler Master V850 SFX GOLD WHITE are passing. In today’s testing, the V850 SFX GOLD WHITE saw the loaded 12v rail post a peak change of ~340mV and the loaded 5v rail post a peak change of ~50mV. The unloaded 5v peak change during the 12v load was ~45mV. Those numbers are, in an absolute sense, passing. In a relative sense, this unit is, again, harder to place as we have not seen any other 850W SFX power supplies to date here at TheFPSReview.

However, the Cooler Master V650 SFX GOLD is based on this same platform and it did better than this unit across the board which is not a good thing. The reason why that is not a good thing is the loads applied during the Transient Load tests today are a far smaller percentage of this unit’s capacity than they are of the V650 SFX GOLD’s capacity. It seems that, perhaps, 850W may be starting to be a bit more than we should expect from this platform as the performance, in a relative and absolute sense, is starting to drop off. Let’s move on now to see how this unit does in the DC Output Quality aspect of our testing!

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Paul Johnson
Paul is a long time PC hobbyist and tech enthusiast having gotten his start when he broke his first C64 quickly followed by breaking his first IBM XT. Most notably however, for 12 years, he served as the Power Supply Editor for one of the truly early, groundbreaking, and INDPENDENT PC enthusiast sites ([H]ardOCP) until its mothballing in April of 2019. Paul now brings the same flair and style of his power supply reviews to The FPS Review.

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