Gigabyte UD850GM Power Supply Review

The Gigabyte UD850GM survived all of our tough tests.

Gigabyte UD850GM
(Image credit: © Tom's Hardware)

Tom's Hardware Verdict

The Gigabyte UD850GM has properly set protection features, but its overall performance needs boosting.

Reasons to buy

  • +

    Full power at 47 degrees Celsius

  • +

    All protections are properly set

  • +

    High efficiency

  • +

    Tight load regulation at 12V

  • +

    Decent transient response

  • +

    Long hold-up time

  • +

    Low vampire power with 115V

  • +

    Two EPS and four PCIe 6+2 pin connectors

  • +

    Fully modular

  • +

    Compatible with the alternative sleep mode

  • +

    Compact dimensions

Reasons to avoid

  • -

    Not competitive performance

  • -

    Gets loud under stress

  • -

    Not tight load regulation on the minor rails

  • -

    No 12VHPWR PCIe connector

  • -

    Rifle bearing fan instead of the advertised HDB

  • -

    Above 0.15W vampire power with 230V

  • -

    Short distance between 4-pin Molex connectors

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The Gigabyte UD850GM looks to have solved all the problems of its predecessor, but it stays behind in overall performance. You expect a new model to offer higher performance than the previous one, but this is not the case here. However, we choose reliability over performance any day of the week. If you want something better, you should look at the Corsair RM850x, which lives on our best PSUs article, and the Cooler Master V850 Gold V2.

The Gigabyte UD series still uses MEIC, the same OEM as the legendary P-GM series. However, the platforms have been upgraded to cope with the failures of past models. The lower capacity members of the line don't have a PCIe 5.0 connector, contrary to the 1000 W model. That said, a connector addition doesn't provide compatibility with the newest ATX v3.0 spec. The transient tests for the PSUs having a PCIe 5.0 connector are extra tough, and we expect that many units will not be able to pass them. The UD850GM only has legacy PCIe connectors, so we won't test it under the new transient response scenarios. 

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Aris Mpitziopoulos
Contributing Editor

Aris Mpitziopoulos is a contributing editor at Tom's Hardware, covering PSUs.