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StarTech.com WattSmart EPSPOW850PRO 850w

While StarTech.com is not extremely well known among enthusiasts, it is up to the challenge of facing the PSU crushing machine here at HardOCP. Is the 850 watt WattSmart computer power supply smart enough for your system?

Overview

The first thing we are going to look at with the StarTech.com EPSPOW850PRO is its packaging, accessories, and documentation. While normally none of these items is a make or break item for a power supply the packaging quite often contains a lot of information about the product we are purchasing. The inclusion of an owner’s manual that provides actual information about our product is also of great help. Accessories are almost unnecessary with a power supply as the unit is self contained, unless it is modular, but there are cases where a manufacturer can include useful accessories to make installation, routing, and use more efficient.

To say the StarTech.com EPSPOW850PRO packaging is sparse would be a gross understatement. In fact the packaging contains just a few bullet points on the front of the unit and little other information of substance. We do find that the unit is billed as being 80plus certified (which a quick check of the 80plus website shows is indeed accurate) and along these same lines we are additionally informed that “high efficiency saves power and memory.” To claim high efficiency helps save memory seems a bit of a stretch but higher efficiency units do lead to lower operating costs (though in single installations these advantages are not nearly as apparent as in areas where hundreds of units are fielded in one location). Continuing the green trend we also find that the unit is ROHS compliant for our European friends. The last two items of interest are the stickers stating that the unit has a three year warranty and is SLI Ready. While longer than some warranties this 3 year warranty is on the shorter end of what he have seen on many high end power supplies of late. Finally, we see that the unit is billed as being SLI Ready and a quick check of the SLIZone webpage does indeed find the unit to be certified for 8800GTX SLI. Conversely the unit is not listed on the ATI CrossFire page at the time of writing but if the unit can indeed run an 8800GTX SLI setup it should easily be able to power any reasonable CrossFire setup as well.

The power label and rail layout for this unit are both right about what we would expect from an 850w power supply in this day and market. The unit features a capacity of 760w (or 63.3A) on the four 12v rails that feed the most power hungry components in modern PCs. With the StarTech.com EPSPOW850PRO being a multi 12v arrangement that at least pays lip service to the old 240VA limitation in the ATX12v specification, (although some units based on this ATNG model have had OCP set points for the 12v rails set considerably higher than 20A) the EPSPOW850PRO has an appropriate 12v arrangement that like many newer power supplies does not strictly meet the ATX12v or EPS standard for rail distribution. The rail distribution on this unit, while not necessarily compliant, is very helpful for users planning on running dual VGA systems as each set of PCI-Express connectors is on its own 12v rail (with four connectors that means there are two 12v rails in play here just for the PCI-Express connectors) that has a combined 40A available to the four PCI-Express connectors. The other two 12v rails feed the ATX/Molex/SATA connectors on one rail and the final 12v rail houses the EPS Connector. With this arrangement it would be rather difficult for a user to over draw any of these rails as there are few components on the market today that are capable of drawing near these limits with the connector restrictions in place on this unit. These connectors include the previously mentioned four PCI-Express connectors (all 6 pin), six Molex, and six SATA connectors. Certainly with this arrangement this unit is going to be able to handle the vast majority of possible configurations out there today without over taxing any rail.

Once we open the StarTech.com EPSPOW850PRO packaging we find just the power supply, mounting screws, and manual so don’t expect anything special here as the interior is as sparse as the exterior. The manual is five pages long and includes some installation instructions, general specifications, and warranty information. Besides being really bare the most striking thing is the manual lists the warranty as two years as opposed to the box which lists it as 3 years (as does most of the marketing information). So what we are left with here is a very sparse and possibly incorrect manual for the EPSPOW850PRO along with the basic items found with most power supplies. Hopefully in the future StarTech.com will flesh the user manual out more so that it provides more useful information and hopefully they will fact check it a bit better so that things like contradictory warranty information are caught before printing.