# Corsair RM850i Power Supply Review



## rajan1311 (Feb 14, 2016)

Introduction:

Corsair has always been key player in the power supply market. Their products have generally been top notch in terms of both quality and innovation. I first heard of their quality with the VX450, which was known for its legendary quality. Corsair, like many others in this segment does not make PSUs themselves. They are manufactured by other companieswho specialize in this equipment, such as CWT, FPS, Seasonic to name a few. Having said that, most of corsair’s power supplies are not off-the-shelve re-brands. They often design the power supplies in house and get them manufactured by one of the guys mentioned earlier. This gives them much better control over the quality of the product and also allows them to come up with innovative features.

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If you are looking for an in-depth review, sorry guys, I am a bit out of my league here. Your better off reading johny guru’s review of the same unit. If you don’t want to go through those numbers and just want some digested info, read on!

Features and Specifications:

This power supply does pack a pretty decent number of features, features that you might not see in most other PSUs. So here is a quick run-down and my take on those features.

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The unit is 80+ gold certified and uses all japanese capacitors. 80+ Gold certification essentially tells you its expected efficiency numbers. Its not the highest rating, you have platinum and titanium certifications as well, but you generally find that on higher power units, which needless to say, are much more expensive. To give you an idea on what these numbers are, here is a quick breakup:

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Now some more interesting features.

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Since the power supply has pretty good efficiency, little heat is generated on lower loads. This lets them turn off the fan completely on lower loads. This is pretty cool imo as most of the time when your PC is idling or say your watching movies, the fan will remain switched off. The PWM controlled fan spins up once the temperature is above 40C.

The 12v rail can be configured to work in either single or multi rail mode. Both modes have their own pros and cons, but for most users, both should be fine. By default though, the PSU works in multi rail mode.

Last but not least, the power supply comes with corsair link capability. This lets you connect your power supply to your motherboard via a USB 2.0 internal header. Once connected, you can now monitor power supply efficiency, power consumption, voltages, fan speed, etc. Pretty cool feature to have IMO.

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Oh, I almost forgot to mention, its a fully modular.

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Now lets take a quick look at the specifications:

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Packaging and Contents:

The power supply comes in a yellow black box with some nice visuals of the power supply and features laid out in the back.

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Now lets take a look inside.

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Here we find the power supply sandwiched between 2 moulded pieces of foam, a bag that contains all the cables and a manual.

Taking a close look at the power supply, its a beauty !

*techverdict.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/850-rmi-overall.jpg 

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Now lets take a look at the cables and accessories that come with it.

The power supply comes with a mix of flat and sleeved cables. The sata and molex power cables are flat. I personally like flat cables, so I wish all were flat, but this is a very minor crib.

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You also get some molex to 4 pin converters, connectors for corsair link, a bunch of cable ties and a corsair badge.

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Usage Experience:

I have been using this power supply for a while now and in general I am very happy with the performance. I run an i5 2500k (stock) and a GTX 780Ti and the power supply was obviously good enough. My system consumed about 130w when idle at an efficiency of 80% and about 340W under load at an efficiency of 90%. This power supply is definitely an overkill for my usage. I would recommend it to someone who is looking for a dual GPU configuration or someone looking to do some pretty heavy overclocking on both the CPU and GPU. Otherwise a 650W power supply would be better.

One interesting thing I noticed is that it plays well with my APC UPS. A lot of people face this problem where their UPS has compatibility issues with power supplies with active power factor correction. I am not too sure as to the root cause of that issue, people say its because the UPS is not a pure sine wave one, but I have generally found it to be a hit and miss. It would work fine at time and fail other times. The RM850i did not seem to have any such issue, there were plenty of power cuts during my gaming session and the system worked every time.

The Verdict:

Well, there is not much that is wrong with the Corsair RM850i. It performs very well, has a bunch of useful features. Personally, I liked the zero rpm fan mode and the corsair link functionality. The fact that it did not have issues with my UPS was an added bonus. Combine that with a 7 year warranty, the deal just gets better. The only problem I see with it is the price. At Rs 14,499 on amazon.in it is a little expensive. If you want to save a few bucks, you could get the rmx series which are essentially the same power supplies without the corsair link functionality. Still, I'll give this a *9.5/10*.

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Original review at: Corsair RM850i Power Supply Review | Tech Verdict


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