Power supply units are typically the least sexy part of a new PC especially with the allure of the latest GPUs, CPUs and of course, RGB.
The PSU, however, is arguably the most important piece of your PC and as such, it warrants spending more money than you likely would, just to insure your PC functions properly and other components don’t meet an electrifying end.
Given the fact that our Hypertext Test Bench will be using components that aren’t ours, we need to insure that our PSU is solid and in that regards Cooler Master and Gigabyte South Africa have gone above and beyond.
Our PSU for the test bench is Cooler Master’s XG850 Plus Platinum.
One of the key features for us here is the digital display panel. Given South Africa’s rampant power cuts in the form of loadshedding, many folks may want to know exactly how much power a system is drawing in order to work that into alternative energy supply requirements.
This will also allow us to comment on energy efficiency in reviews although we are going to need a bit more equipment in order to share well informed opinions. As a start though, the XG850 Plus Platinum is a great place to build from.
Internally the XG850 Plus Platinum features a DC-to-DC converter as well as an LLC resonant converter. These should help to make the power supply more reliable and stable leading to an all-round safer PC which is important when reviewing gear that we don’t own outright.
The PSU also features a 135mm silent fan with ARGB lightning. The fan speed and ARGB lighting can be controlled via Cooler Master’s Masterplus+ Software which is also able to monitor temperatures, and power draw.
The XG850 Plus Platinum sports an 80 Plus Platinum efficiency rating, is fully modular and boasts a mean time between failure rating of over 100 000 hours.
We’re incredibly excited to get our system built and power it on. Of course we’re still missing two important components, the CPU and the memory.
Next week, we’ll take a closer look at our 12th Gen Intel Core processor.
If you’ve missed previous blog you can see the other components that form the Hypertext Test Bench below. We must once again give our thanks to Gigabyte South Africa and Cooler Master for helping Hypertext build a test bench.
