Published: February 18, 2009 | Source: Corsair | Author: James Napier

Corsair TX850w ATX PSU

Internal Components

Removing the four screws and lifting the lid on the TX850, the first thing that hits you is just how spacious it is inside. Normally, most manufacturers cram components wall to wall, making the casing as small as possible. However, inside the TX there is a good 20mm gap between the PCB and casing on one side, and 5-10mm on the other. Everything inside the unit is tidy, with all cables entering the casing being tightly bunched together and decent space between each of the components allowing them to ‘breath’.

Three black aluminium heatsinks run in parallel across the unit, providing cooling for the attached mosfets. Positioned middle-right we can see the large primary transformer that deals with the +3.3v /+5v and +12v rails, and over to the left of it is yet another transformer, only much smaller, and responsible for dealing with the +5vsb (Standby) rail.

The primary capacitor inside the TX850 is a full-height version manufactured by well-regarded Japanese manufacturer Nippon Chemicon. This capacitor has a rating of 450v / 470uF and can do its business all the way up to 105c, indicating that it should stand the test of time inside a toasty PC system. Several other caps can also be seen around the unit, but without de-soldering them, these are much harder to identify. Interestingly, Corsair have also used a single solid polymer capacitor on the 12v side, which generally is a better choice than the standard electrolytic ones, but does seem a little out of place.

Corsair TX 850w Caps/Ferrite/Transformer

The 140mm fan is manufactured by a Taiwanese company that many of us – especially watercooling enthusiasts, will have heard of before: Yate Loon. Best known for their high performance 120mm fans with low noise levels, it’s certainly no wonder that Corsair insisted on using them inside the TX850. This particular model carries the marking D14BH-12 and a quick check of Yate Loon’s website shows that it can push 140CFM at 48.5dBA. Perfect if you intend to run it at lower speeds.

Now that we’ve finished the tour of the TX850’s innards, let’s have a quick check at what cables Corsair has fitted it with before moving on to the Pièce de résistance – the load testing.

Cables & Connectors

A total of ten cables extend from the unit branching out into 8xSATA, 8xMolex, 4xPCI-E, 1xATX and 1xEPS connectors. Each and every cable on the unit is sleeved in a black mesh finished off with black heatshrink at the ends. Just like a lot of other units we’re reviewed recently, Corsair have decided not to carry the sleeving all the way into the PSU, instead stopping just a couple of centimetres short. This doesn’t exactly score points in the looks department, but it does enable each of the nine protruding cables to have a much greater bend radius, which could prove helpful if the PSU were to be installed in a confined space.

Each of the four PCI-E cables is capable of being converted to either 6-Pin or 8-Pin standards. This ensures that the TX850 will work with all existing graphics card combinations along with (hopefully) whatever plug and pin combinations that GPU manufacturers enforce on us in the future.

Similarly, both the 8-Pin EPS-12v and 24-Pin ATX connectors can also be converted back to 20-Pin ATX / 4-Pin P4-12v standards for compatibility with older motherboards if required.