ASUS ROG THOR 850W
AsusTek Computer Inc. (ASUS) is one of the older, most influential, and most innovative companies in the enthusiast realm having been founded by former Acer engineers in 1989. Today, ASUS’ product portfolio touches on just about every aspect of the consumer, enthusiast, DIY, and even the professional market with products such as tablets, laptops, desktops, servers, smartphones, networking equipment, motherboards, video cards, disk drives, cases, and so on. Among this huge product portfolio, ASUS maintains its Republic of Gamers marketing which is generally applied to a certain subset of their enthusiast-oriented offerings. ASUS has expanded these items to include power supplies and, today, we are looking at the ROG THOR 850W (ROG-THOR-850P) which is produced in conjunction with Seasonic.
Seasonic is one of the older companies producing consumer power supplies having been founded in 1975 and entering the PC power supply production market in 1980. Seasonic is the OEM and ODM of this unit. During that more than 30 years as a company, Seasonic has cultivated lines of power supplies that are today some of the standard-bearers for efficiency and quiet computing. This focus, and its reputation for quality, has lead to an explosion in production as Seasonic can be found providing OEM services on various model lines for Antec, XFX, Corsair, PC Power and Cooling, and of course under its own Seasonic brand.
Thor’s Hammer?
The ASUS ROG THOR 850W is the first power supply we have seen from ASUS as well as one of the few they have ever produced. This is in spite of the fact that ASUS has been a major industry player in the enthusiast realm for a very long time. Given the fact that they have waited this long to step out into the PSU market makes us hope that they have been working extraordinarily diligently in order to dot all their “I’s” and cross all of their “T’s”. Needless to say, we are very interested in what they have in store for us today. However, before we get too antsy and jump the gun by moving on to see how the ROG THOR 850W does, and what it costs, let’s first see what ASUS has to say about this unit:
Inside and out, our first PSU is packed with innovative ideas. Externally, Aura Sync RGB illumination and an integrated OLED information panel enable unique customization and monitoring options for your ROG gaming rig. Under the hood, high-quality capacitors, a 135mm Wing-blade fan, and large heatsinks allow the ROG Thor 850W to achieve LAMBDA A+ and 80 PLUS®Platinum certifications, making it ideal for PC enthusiasts who demand performance perfection.
Let’s move on now and see what we can expect when a user purchases the ASUS ROG THOR 850W power supply in retail in terms of documentation, accessories, cable count, rail layout, output characteristics, and general build quality.