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).

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.

Series – XG Series
ATX Version – Intel ATX 12V Ver 2.53
Input Voltage – 100-240V
Input Frequency – 50-60Hz
Dimensions – 160x150x86mm
Fan Size – 135mm
Fan Speed/Noise Level – 1800 RPM;  up to 25 dBA
Efficiency – up to 92% @ Typical Load
80 Plus Rating – 80 PLUS Platinum
Modular – Fully Modular
Connections – 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)