Corsair Professional Series HX850 Power Supply Review

Corsair HX850 External Design

The HX850 is built inside the same
large chassis Corsair has been using for the majority of their high performance
units, which is virtually required to fit a powerful design and a modular PCB.
The downside is that this chassis is significantly longer than a common ATX
product, measuring a full 20cm (7.9″) deep, not including the space
required by the cables and the modular connectors. The entire chassis is black,
with the bottom part forming a ribbed design aligned with the fan’s grill.

It is common practice for Corsair to
be installing stickers with the company logo and series model printed on them
onto the sides of their units, high performance or not. The HX series sticker
is black with blue accent, as is the series theme color. The company placed the
stickers inside an embossed area between two sets of twin raised stripes.

Not as grandly displayed as the side
stickers, the sticker with the electrical specifications of the HX850 can be
found covering less than half of the top side of the chassis.

Unlike the AX series, the HX series
units are only partially modular, meaning that major cables are still hardwired
to the unit. In the case of the HX850, these cables are the 24-pin ATX
connector, two PCIe connectors and one 4+4pin CPU connector. Ten plugs allow
for up to four more PCIe connectors, one 4+4 CPU connector, 12 Molex connectors
and 12 SATA connectors. Note that there are only four blue connectors for PCIe
and CPU cables; you can either go with up to six PCIe connectors and one 4+4
CPU connector or with two 4+4 CPU connectors and up to five PCIe connectors.

The front side of the HX850 is
pretty standard for any performance power supply, with a typical A/C power plug
and a small on/off switch. Only the small model logo sets this unit apart from
the rest.