Photos and Features
At the end of the day, the HX850i is going to end up tucked away up under the motherboard tray in my new build where no one will see it. But that didn’t stop me from wanting to get a power supply with a little style. Almost every company these days just has a black box for their power supply and they focus on the sticker to make things eye catching but with the HX850i Corsair didn’t go that route. The power supplies case has angled corners on all of the edges and they embossed lines in the fan side as well to match the grill they went with. Neither seems like a big deal, but it didn’t take much to give the HX850i a little style while still looking good.
On both sides of the power supply, the side panels have a stripe indented into the side that Corsair puts their side sticker in. The sticker has the Corsair logo with the sails and then the HX850i branding in a simple but bold font. To match the blue theming of the power supply they do add a touch of the unique Corsair blue as a stripe at the end and with the HX being blue. Because they don’t know if your power supply will be mounted with the fan up or down they do have stickers on both sides and to make sure the sticker is readable the one on the backside is upside down. This way when you flip the power supply over the sticker still lines up. This is the most logical thing to do but even recently I’ve had power supplies that didn’t do that.
On the outside facing panel, before getting a look at everything the power supply comes with a sticker partially covering the power plug. This sticker is just a reminder that the fan doesn’t turn on at low to moderate power usage. This is a feature nearly everything is getting these days but a lot of people building their first new build in a long time are still surprised and trust me, I’ve seen some of the smartest people I know get freaked out thinking something is wrong. With the sticker removed we can get a better look at the exhaust vent area of the power supply. It is designed to pull in air with the fan and blow the warmed air out this end, keeping all of the warm air away from the inside of your PC. So the entire end is covered in pentagon shaped holes. They did slip in an HX850i logo with a touch of blue, so in situations like mine where no one can see what power supply you have they can still catch a peak. The power plug is also back here and there is also a simple switch to cut all power.
The fan side of the HX850i is the most unique part of the entire power supply. Some companies have been moving away from the metal wire fan grills but Corsair went the other way and designed a slightly different grill to cover up the 140mm cooling fan. You see normally wire grills have most of the wires going in circles with straight wires for support but this one has circles for support and straight wires going across the power supply. Then the top of the casing has matching lines indented into the case to match. They did the same design on their SFX power supply that I took a look at a while back. The 140m fan is a light gray so it is more visible than most power supply fans as well.
On the flip side, the HX850i has less going on with a solid panel. They did, however, put the information sticker on this side. It has a breakdown of the power rails, the serial number, make and model branding, and all of the normal certification logos.
The last part of the HX850i to check out is, of course, the most important. This is the side with all of the modular cable connections. Here we can see that there are a total of 6 of the 6-pin peripheral or SATA connections available. The 24 pin is split up into two plugs but are next to each other. Then from there the HX850i has five 8-pin connections for PCI-E devices and for the 4+4 CPU power connections. None of those are a surprise at all. The two connections, one button, and one LED over on the left side, however, are interesting. The two plugs are for Corsairs Link tech. You can use the USB connection to plug the HX850i into a USB 2.0 header on your motherboard and with their software, you can get readouts on temperatures, fan speeds, and the power supplies wattage usage. The four pin connection above the USB port is for the same thing, but specifically, if you are using Corsairs Commander Mini that combines Link devices together. The LED and the button below it test the power supplies fan. To do this you have to unhook all of your connections other than the power cable going into the back. You then press the button and the fan will test two speeds then turn the green light on if it tests fine.
Even though I had planned from the beginning to swap some of the cables out with custom sleeved cables for our build, I was still really excited to see that Corsair is still sticking with the same all black flat cables that they have used in all of their power supplies. That design is a lot easier to work with than cables that are all in one sleeve both because they can fit in tighter spaces and also because they can bend easier to make tight curves. The all black finish helps blend in as well. The HX850i came with one 24 pin power cable, two 4+4 CPU cables, and three PCI cables that have two 6+2 connections per cable. This means the HX850i supports motherboards that require two CPU connections and it also has the cabling for up to three video cards assuming you still stay in the wattage. For me, I will be running two GTX 1080’s and should still be well under. You get three SATA power cables and three Molex cables for connecting everything else. They also tucked in two Molex to Floppy adapters on the off chance I need a few floppy drives in my new build. Then there are also the two Corsair link cables.
