Loadshedding is a big problem in South Africa, and you might be looking at a new PSU due to “load shedding”. Enter Cooler Masters XG850 Plus Platinum PSU(bonus, it even has ARGB lighting).
The Cooler Master X850 Plus Platinum is Cooler Masters’ first in-house design. Cooler Master’s previous PSUs were based on OEM designs, tweaked by their in-house designers and sent for production. The XG Plus Platinum platform(the 650, 750 and 850) is rated 80 Plus Platinum. What this means for you is it’s very efficient when it comes to delivering power to the components in your PC. The 80 Plus Platinum rating means that at full load(100% load), the power supply would give you an efficiency of about 91%(this can vary between different PSUs). The XG850 also features a full-bridge LLC resonant converter(check out Toms Hardware article on this) and DC-DC technology. All of the above means for you a very stable PSU. The XG850 is also a fully modular design, meaning that you don’t have a mass of cables just lying around in your PC case(better airflow).
Not even is the XG850 very efficient when it comes to power delivery, but the XG850 is also very silent. Thanks to Cooler Master’s 135mm fan design they employed inside the XG850 (According to Cooler Master), it can reach up to 25db(the sound of a slight breeze) it spins up to 1800rpm. The Fan is also translucent, which helps the ARGB LEDs to shine their brightest. I didn’t see any dark spots when the unit was on.
Now that I told you all about the good features of the XG850 Plus Platinum, let me tell you why this PSU is great for load-shedding and your shiny inverter. The XG850 features a built-in LCD screen(yes, it has ARGB as well). In Cooler Master’s Masterplus software, you can display three types of info. You can display the current Temperature or the current Fan speed(of the 135mm built-in fan) or the current Power consumption your system is drawing! That last display item is a blessing in disguise for us South Africans, especially when choosing an inverter to use with your PC.
Overall I am very happy with Cooler Master’s XG850 Plus Platinum power supply. The XG850 comes in at about R3500(sometimes cheaper at other retailers), which is not too bad for what you get and a 10-year warranty(so you know it would last a while) to boot. I would have liked it if they included sleeved cables instead of the plain black flat cables, but nothing stops you from ordering a sleeved extension set for the XG850. I would recommend this for most gamers that need to upgrade their PSUs and still running RTX3000 series cards.
Available at:
Series:
ATX Version:
Input Voltage:
Input Frequency:
Dimensions:
Fan Size:
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80 Plus Rating:
Modular:
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XG Series
Intel ATX 12V Ver 2.53
100-240V
50-60Hz
160x150x86mm
135mm
1800 RPM; Â up to 25 dBA
up to 92% @ Typical Load
80 PLUS Platinum
Fully Modular
1x ATX 24 Pin, 1x EPS 4+4 Pin, 1x EPS 8 Pin, 12x SATA, 4xPeripheral 4 Pin, 6xPCI-e 6+2 Pin, 1x USB(for controlling LCD)