Silver Power SP-S850 PSU

Silver Powered Up

Out the box, the SP-S850 offers a different style than we're used to as the large straight cuts at the back and embossed sides have an almost Art Deco design with their regular, strong shapes. The Silver Power sticker at the back, while poorly applied in our case, again reaffirms the retro look.

The metallic grey design gives a very normal feel that struggles to appear special, although if you like your power supplies to not appear flashy... you're still out of luck because it uses a large 14cm fan that glows blue with an intensity that's directly related to the amount of juice you're sucking out of it.

That's great if you're making a blue case mod or taking it around a friend's house to show off, but bad if you want to actually sleep with it in the room or watch movies in the dark. There's no way to turn this off either, unless you open it (voiding the warranty) and butcher the LEDs.


Silver Power employs a four rail 12V output with a solid 20 amps per rail and a total of 816W. 96 percent of the total 850 watts is a very high proportion, but 816W only equates to an even 17 amps across the board, rather than the full 20. The ATX, Molex and SATA are linked to 12V-2; 12V-4 handles all the PCI-Express, while 12V-1 and 12V-3 both just handle the EPS12V connectors.


It's a strange mix at best and why we generally favour single rail units over multi-rail. Having the entire graphics hardware - eight PCI-Express connectors - limited to just a single 20 amp rail is pushing things, yet, both CPU power connectors get their own rail entirely to themselves. And most people won't even use one of these!


There is no vibration reduction like the Cooler Master Silent Pro or some Tagan models include, and the non-modular cabling might not be of favour to some.