XPG Core Reactor II VE 850W 80 Plus Gold Power Supply Review

XPG already holds the crown for the most amazing power supply we've ever tested, with the XPG Fusion 1600W Titanium pushing the limits of modern PSU technology. However, few people want or can even afford that £550 behemoth. However, if that's the quality we see on their flagship, I wanted to see what XPG has to offer on their more modest units, starting with the XPG Core Reason II VE, and I have the 850W variant to hand and ready to go on our PSU testing equipment. The CORE REACTOR II series power supply units feature the Intel ATX 3.1 design, and PCIe 5.0 support, as well as the latest 12VHPWR connector to support new and upcoming GPU hardware and other accessories. The CORE REACTOR II can deliver 80 PLUS GOLD efficiency and is available in 1200W, 1000W, 850W, 750W, and 650W models to suit your needs. Features 80 Plus Gold Certified Compact with Modular Design Intelligent, Low-Noise Fan-Curve OVP / OPP / SCP / OCP / UVP / OTP / NLO / SIP 850W Output XPG CORE REACTOR II VE empowers your system with efficient power delivery. It’s compatible with Intel’s latest ATX 3.1 design guidelines and has a dedicated 12V-2x6 connector for the latest graphics cards. This unit boasts a DC-DC circuit design for enhanced performance, stability, and consistency, with exceptional ripple control and hold-up time surpassing Intel's specifications. It has 8 industrial protections fortifying its durability, safeguarding both the unit and your system. For more information, please visit the official product page here. Packaging & Accessories The box is nice and bright, with a clear photo of the PSU right on the front, and labels showing the efficiency, 12VHPWR support, ATX 3.1 and the 850W power output. On the back, there's a breakdown of the PSU dimensions, as well as a list of all the cables and their respective lengths. In the box, you'll find it's all well packaged, with the cables in a protective plastic wrap, but no storage bag for excess cables. There's a set of stickers, and of course, the PSU. All of the cables are black with black connectors and come with a flat cable design that will ease your cable management. Even the 12VHPWR is flat, which is uncommon as these are often rounded cables even with PSUs that otherwise have flat cables. A Closer Look Without a doubt, this is one cool-looking PSU, and while a power supply doesn't leave much opportunity for aesthetics, the top fan mesh does look unique and interesting and is sure to appeal to those wanting their PC to look its best. There's a lot of ventilation here, which is good, and there's a good quality large fan on the interior too, but no RGB, which I actually prefer anyway. There's a nice design on the side, with a stamped-in pattern of lines that match the overall aesthetic of the fan mesh. And, of course, it's the same on the other side too. When it comes to connectors, they're all nicely spaced out and broken up into clearly labelled blocks, with the motherboard, peripherals, CPU/VGA and the 12VHPWR all easy enough to understand. Finally, on the underside, you'll find the usual rating sticker, should you ever need to remind yourself of the power limits of each rail. A Closer Look - Interior The fan in a Hong Hua HA1225H12F-Z, a 120mm model with a fluid dynamic bearing design. XPG has the latest CWT CSE platform for their latest PSU design, a good choice, as it uses high-quality components and is a well-proven platform to build upon. Throughout the PSU, you can see that they've used the great capacitors from Nichicon and Nippon Chemi-Con, which should ensure great power delivery, durability and performance. The main bulk capacitor is the Nippon Chemi-Con which is rated at 450w and 850uF up to 105c, which is likely more than overkill for what is required in an 850W PSU unit, but hey, that's no bad thing! There are good-quality heatsinks on all the major components too, with a few daughter boards used throughout, ensuring all the hardware gets ample airflow. Interestingly, there's a layer of shielding here separating a coil on one side from the main transformer, now, that doesn't seem like a bad thing, but honestly, I don't think I've ever seen a component separate like this in any of my previous reviews, and it must be to help reduce any interference from the AC-line in filtering stage. Methodology & Testing At eTeknix we take the power supply testing procedure very seriously and have invested a lot of resources into acquiring the appropriate testing equipment. For all power supply reviews, we test the power supplies with dedicated power supply testing equipment. This means we can get the most accurate results from our testing as opposed to using software benchmarks (such as OCCT) or multi-meter readouts which are broadly inaccurate. Testing Hardware Sunmoon SM-8800 Active Load Tester Stingray DS1M12 USB Oscilloscope Voltcraft DT-10L laser tachometer What the eTeknix Test Procedure Involves Testing each power supply at 20/40/60/80/100% load (with load balanced across all rails) and measuring PFC (power factor correction), efficiency (actual power divided by power "pulled at the wall") which also uses a 50% load test, and voltage regulation (deviance from expected voltages of 3.3/5/12 on the main rails). Measuring ripple with an oscilloscope at 20/40/60/80/100% load. Transient loads taken with an oscilloscope are taken from 0% to 100% on the 12v raid, 3.3v rail, and then both combined. Measuring fan speed after a stabilisation period of five minutes at each loading scenario using the Voltcraft DT-10L laser tachometer and a reflective strip on the fan. Testing each power supply's OPP (Over Power Protection) mechanism and seeing how many watts each power supply can deliver before shutting down. Any deviation from this will be explained per review as appropriate on the respective testing pages, but this methodology page will remain unchanged. Other Things to Consider We recognise that a single 12-volt cable can provide only 6 Amps before overheating (which corrupts voltage regulation and efficiency) so we used an adequate number of cables for each power supply to ensure there is no efficiency loss from poor cable selection. If there is more than one 12VHPWR on a PSU, all will be used to test their combined loads. We use the same time scale and horizontal millivolt scale on our oscilloscope for all ripple tests, that is a 20ms T/DIV (horizontal) and a 0.02 V/DIV (vertical) meaning the scale is from -80mV to +80mV, ATX spec dictates that the 12v rail must fall within 150mv of ripple and the 3.3/5 within 50mv so that scale allows us to include both 150 and 50mV peaks. (Some older PSU reviews use different scales which were later ditched as the visual representation they give is inadequate, in these reviews written measurements are provided only). Deviance is the terminology used to represent the way voltages diverge from the expected values Voltage Regulation To test voltage regulation we load the power supply to five different load scenarios that give an equal spread of load across every single rail. So that means 20% on all rails, 40% on all rails and so on. We then calculate the average deviation of each rail from its expected voltage. Ideally, anything of +/- 2% regulation is seen as a very good result. Power Efficiency Power efficiency is measured by calculating the supplied wattage divided by the wattage drawn at the wall/plug, multiplied by 100 to give a percentage. We then compare that to the particular 80 Plus certification the company claims to see if it meets that. You can see the 80 Plus certifications below, we always test power supplies at 230v. Transient Loads Power Factor Correction Power Factor Correction is the ratio of the real power flowing to the load, to the apparent power in the circuit. PFC aims to make the load circuitry that is power factor corrected appear purely resistive (apparent power equal to real power). In this case, the voltage and current are in phase and the reactive power consumption is zero. The closer the number to one the better as this allows the most efficient delivery of electrical power (Source - Wikipedia). Ripple An oscilloscope can easily measure noise and Ripple. These show how much voltage fluctuation there is on a particular rail. We tested the rail stability of the 3.3-volt, 5-volt and 12-volt rails using an identical time and millivolt scale for all graphs. millivolt ripple is measured by the peak-to-peak size of the voltage curve. The latest ATX 12-volt version 2.3 specifications state that ripple from peak to peak must be no higher than 50 millivolts for the 3.3-volt and 5-volt rails, while the 12-volt rail is allowed up to 120 millivolts peak to peak to stay within specifications. Millivolt figures are stated to the closest increment of 5 given their variability. OPP Power supplies are often quoted as having various protection mechanisms and the most important of these is Over Power Protection. In our testing, we crank up the power draw until the power supply either shuts down (meaning the OPP mechanism is present and working) or blows up (meaning it is either not present or not working). We then note the maximum power consumption before the power supply shut down, or before it blew up. Fan Speed When testing in a power supply laboratory it is difficult to take fan noise readings as the noise from the Sunmoon test equipment and air conditioning corrupts everything. The next best thing in our circumstances was reading off the fan speed with a tachometer to get an idea of the noise. The ambient temperature during testing is held constant at 22 degrees, with 1 degree of variation. Each power supply had a consistent period of 5 minutes to stabilise between each load scenario. In my experience, the following general relationships apply between noise levels and fan speeds, though it can vary greatly between the type of fan used. Below 800 RPM - Inaudible/Silent 800 to 1000 RPM - Barely audible 1000 - 1200 RPM - Audible but still quiet 1200 - 1400 RPM - Moderately noisy 1400 - 1800 RPM - Noisy 1800 - 2000 RPM or above - Intolerable Internal Components This is just an example of what you can expect to see on a PSU interior. Efficiency Right away we can see great efficiency throughout the load range, never dropping below 90% and often well above that, hitting its peak around 50% load. PFC (Power Factor Correction) PFC is very good, the closer to 1.000 the better, with it hitting 0.98 at just 40% and peaking at 80% which is likely where it'll spend most of its time, and that helps with the efficiency and will reduce heat production. Voltage Regulation We like to see these tolerances within 3% and as you can see, the stability of each rail is even better than that, all under 1%, except the 3.3v which was just below that, but still well within tolerance. Ripple Ideally, we want to see under 150mv on the 12v rail, and at 20-23.6mv it's well within that limit and pretty consistent. Furthermore, under 50mv for the rest of the rails, and again, very consistent and low ripple throughout each load. 3.3V 5V 12V 5VSB Over Power Protection and Max Wattage Rated at 850W this PSU is plenty powerful for something like the RTX 4070 Super cards, but should you have a power spike, it can pull well over 1000W for a short time before the OPP kicks in and shuts things down, which it did so perfectly and without issue., Transient Loads These results measure the power supply from 0% load to 100% load on various rails to simulate a power spike from your system. Typically, we would like to see as small a spike as possible relative to the requested voltage. With modern GPUs being notorious for power spikes, this is becoming more relevant in modern PSU design. The transients on the 3V and 5V were pretty much instant, and while the 12V was slower at around 0.06ms, it's a smooth gradient with no ripple, under or overshoot, so again, a very clean result here. 0-100% 3V 0-100% +5VSB 0-100% 12V Cross-Loads The crossloads didn't throw up any issues either, loading in either test didn't change the 3.3v, 5v, or the 12v much at all, and these are some of the most consistent results I've seen and well with the 3% target we like to see. Fan Speed There's no optional hybrid fan mode on this PSU, however, it will stop the fan at low temperatures or loads regardless, so at low usage it's completely silent, and even when under full load the low RPM fan is unlikely to ever be noticeable, as it's surprisingly quiet. How Much Does it Cost? The XPG Core Reactor II VE 850W Power Supply is available from around £100 or $119, which isn't a bargain but it's not overpriced either, and pretty much in line with other similar power output, fully modular 80 Plus Gold units from any of the reputable brands on the market right now. You can check for stock and prices via the Where to Buy section here. Overview The latest PSU from XPG is one of the absolute best in its class, and while 850W may not be what some regard as high-end, it's certainly more than enough power for a lot of mid-to-high-end gaming PC builds, offering plenty of power for the likes of an RTX 4070 Super series card, or equivalent card from AMD, with any of the best gaming CPUs on the market. However, this PSU still delivered the kind of voltage tolerances and stability we would expect to see on much more powerful and expensive units, and it's a clear sign that XPG didn't skimp on the quality just because it's a lower-power unit. The internal components look excellent, with all premium quality capacitors used throughout the design, and good quality components used for everything else for that matter. There are lots of little details, like anti-vibration adhesive between nearby components to prevent unwanted movement, noises, humming, etc. There's also a layer of copper shielding the AC line-in, and a more robust AC line filtering stage, which is clearly reflected in the testing as the PSU has a very low and consistent ripple on all rails. When it comes to safety, it ticks all the right boxes, with every major industry feature present ensuring your hardware is protected. We pushed the PSU way over 1000W and it held up great, with the OPP kicking in at +37% over the 850W rating and safely shutting down, so dealing with power spikes won't be an issue, and I'd even be confident running this PSU at 100% load for extended times, as its very well made and showed no signs there would be any issues at all. Should I Buy One? On the surface, this is a relatively simple 80 Plus Gold power supply that can deliver 850W of power and has fully modular cables, but it delivers a level of performance worthy of a more expensive unit, with great efficiency at all loads, low ripple noise, consistent performance under crossloads, and a quiet fan, really, you couldn't expect any more than what's on offer here at this price range!