PowerColor Extreme 850 W Power Supply Review
Power Distribution
Contents
In Figure 16, you can see the power supply label containing all the power specs.
Figure 16: Power supply label
This power supply has four +12 V virtual rails, and we could confirm this by the presence of individual over current protection circuits attached to each rail (see Figure 17). Click here to learn more about this subject.
Figure 17: “Shunts” (current sensors)
These rails are distributed like this:
- +12V1: ATX12V/EPS12V cable that is permanently attached to the power supply
- +12V2: The two video card cables that are permanently attached to the power supply
- +12V3: Main motherboard cable, SATA and peripheral connectors
- +12V4: The two video card cables (or the ATX12V/EPS12V) available on the modular cabling system
This distribution is good, as it separates the CPU (ATX12V/EPS12V) from the video cards in separate rails. However, we think it would be smarter if the manufacturer put each of the video card power cables on separate rails. If you have only one video card, both connectors will be connected to the same rail. Maybe it would be wiser to have each connector on a separate rail.
Let’s now see if this power supply can really deliver 850 W.