Gigabyte Aorus P850W Modular Power Supply Review

A Closer Look

The exterior packaging carries all the branding you would fully expect from Gigabyte and Aorus. The bright orange on black really stands out. Despite the black background though, the image of the power supply is nicely highlighted as bold and clear. In terms of the product information, the front of the box contains all the key points regarding the design.

The back of the packaging is absolutely loaded with details about the power supply. Not only does it give you a full breakdown of the fully-modular features, but it also details the 100% Japanese capacitors and the ‘smart fan’ design.

Whats In The Box?

Out of the box, the Aorus P850w is fantastic. The power supply looks absolutely awesome as it sits (we’ll get onto that in more detail shortly). You’re given all of the modular cables in a nice black branded canvas back and you’re also provided with the mounting screws and a very decent product manual.

The Power Supply

In terms of actual branding, there isn’t a lot of it on the power supply. What is there though is excellently presented. Between the branding, design and colour highlights, it really looks excellent. A particularly highlight definitely has to go to the branding/product ID on the side which, with the silver edging, just looks great!

The fan area of the power supply has the Aorus logo in the centre. With the centre standing slightly embossed to the main block of the power supply and (again) the silver highlights, these little touches really make it stand out.

The base of the power supply contains all of the technical details. Specifically how the power is outputted amongst the separate power rails. To many, this will mean absolutely nothing. For the more technical minded though, it’s good information to have easily at your disposal.

The vents to the rear of the power supply are nice and large set in a hexagon pattern. While only a little void space (below the power input) not used, this should provide excellent air flow.

As this is a modular power supply, the input bank is clearly an interesting point in the design. In this regard, the sockets are well spaced with the connectors fitting in tightly, but without too much resistance. As you can see in the image below, these are all itemised to help you make sure you put the right cable in the right hole.

The cables themselves have a nice flexible (but thick) coating. In addition, the length of these is also excellent which should mean easy compatibility with most systems with a decent bit of wiggle room for cable management too.

Interior

Internally, the Auros P850W is excellently presented. While we will go into further detail shortly, at a cursory glance everything looks very well made in terms of both the components, their placement and the manufacturing process.

A close look at the board gives us a good indication of the excellent build quality. Unlikely many (less well made) power supplies, you will find no big blobs of white glue everywhere. In addition, you will also note that the components within are exceptionally well space. The more eagle-eyed amongst you may have noted that this has 5 separate heatsink banks. This should really help promote the passive running mode as well as provide optimal cooling when the fan is running.

As this is advertised as ‘100% Japanese’ capacitors on the box, we do, of course, have to check that out. A close look at the 2 main capacitors show that they are indeed Japanese. Manufactured by Chemi-con and rated up to 105c, these are about as good as you would hope to expect to see inside a power supply.

Finally, in regards to the cooling fan, the model used in this design is the Ya-Lin 135mm. We’ve seen this fan used on many occasions before and have always found it to be an excellent performer when asked to do its job.

Important – Please Read

To understand the results on the new few pages, please take the time to read our detailed testing methodology page. The next page of this review will help you understand what the results of our testing mean, and educate you on the various qualities we look for in a good PSU.