Lian Li Silent Force 850W PSU

Cables and Connectors

• One 50cm 24-pin ATX cable
  
• One 50cm 4+4-pin EPS12V CPU Power cable
  
• One 50cm 8-pin EPS12V CPU Power cable
  
• Two cables with three Molex connectors at 50cm, 65cm, 80cm and a floppy connector at 95cm.
  
• Two cables with three SATA connectors at 50cm, 65cm and 80cm.
  
• Two 50cm 6+2-pin PCI-Express cables
  
• Two 50cm 6-pin PCI-Express cables

Lian Li includes a decent variety of cables with some good choices of connectors, although we think only six SATA is perhaps cutting us short when building a performance PC - we consider six SATA ports a minimum. All the cables are the same length too - there's no variety which is important in a modular design since people buy modular to only use the cables they need to minimise mess. In addition, having a ton of extra wire spare because your PSU is right next to your optical drives is not the ideal solution.


The braid is a good quality: appropriately tight fitting with a soild heatshrunk seal that doesn't feel the need to use ugly zip ties. Only the ATX cable is zip tied under the heatshrink, but since it has 23 cables to bunch together, it's not unsurprising. The braid goes right into the PSU which looks better, but that isn't mirrored by the EPS 12V CPU power cables, as the heatshrink is outside the unit.

In fact, we'd have preferred the 4+4-pin in addition to a PCI-Express 6-pin cable tethered to the PSU instead of both the EPS 12V cables. While we agree an this PSU should include both because there's a possibility an 850W will be used with a dual CPU workstation PC that requires both, more PCs will only need one of these and a PCI-Express connector.

Of the PCI-Express cables though, they are easily identified by their red connectors and the 6+2-pin is very neatly done and means there is no ugly adapter cables needed. The four afford enough connectivity for quad CrossFire, but only normal SLI. Nvidia only certifies three-Way SLI for 1kW and upwards though, so that doesn't matter.

The Molex cables have push-release plastic on them to help with unplugging and the SATA plugs are at 90 degrees to the cable which should make them easier and neater to use in some cases. However, trying to plug two into hard drives directly on top of each other is a bit of a pain.


Lian Li uses a mixture of 18 and 16 AWG grade 12V cables, although 16 only features in the ATX and the half of one of the EPS power cables. All the PCI-Express cables appear to use the thinner 18 grade wire, unlike the lower resistance 16, as do the peripheral power cables although it's not necessary for Molex and SATA since the current draw is lower.

The ferrite cores that surround the ends of the PCI-Express connectors may look good, giving the impression that Lian Li actually cares about 12V power ripple, but in reality we've heard many times that they do sod all - to really get ferrite cores to work properly they need to be included earlier in the power processing stages. We've got no means to test and prove/disprove this claim though, but if they were that effective, surely everyone would see to use them?