XFX XTR Series 850W PSU Review

Reviews
By Aris Mpitziopoulos
published

XFX cooperates closely with Seasonic for its PSU products. That's a major advantage, since Seasonic is a top OEM. The XTR line is XFX's second-best, after the XTS family, and today's review focuses on the 850W model.

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Cross-Load Tests And Infrared Images

Our cross-load tests are described in detail here.

To generate the following charts, we set our loaders to auto mode through our custom-made software before trying more than 25,000 possible load combinations with the +12V, 5V and 3.3V rails. The load regulation deviations in each of the charts below were calculated by taking the nominal values of the rails (12V, 5V and 3.3V) as point zero.

Load Regulation Charts

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Efficiency Chart

For the most part, between 140W and 650W loads the PSU offers higher than 90% efficiency. This is definitely one of the good 80 PLUS Gold PSUs, achieving close to Platinum-level performance.

Ripple Charts

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Infrared Images

Toward the end of the cross-load tests, we took some photos of the PSU with our modified FLIR E4 camera that delivers 320x240 IR resolution (76,800 pixels).

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The temperatures inside are pretty low considering the operational conditions. The 120mm fan pushes enough air volume at full speed and with enough static pressure to cool down the parts that get hot under taxing loads.

Aris Mpitziopoulos
Contributing Editor

Aris Mpitziopoulos is a Contributing Editor at Tom's Hardware US, covering PSUs.

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13 Comments Comment from the forums
  • turkey3_scratch
    How come on the ripple page the 5VSB rail always stays under 15mv (except CL1) but on the crossloads page the 5VSB ripple graph is completely blue, hence greater than 30mv the entire time? Also, you have two "and"s in a row on Page 5. Anyway, what I love about Seasonic is they don't fall short in any category. This PSU excels everywhere, I guess except fan noise, of course.
    Reply
  • BadActor
    Nice. Any chance you might have a look at the budget XT's?
    Reply
  • turkey3_scratch
    18155380 said:
    Nice. Any chance you might have a look at the budget XT's?

    ^^ Yes please review one of these. Though he only reviews units that the companies actually send to him, so it could be they don't want the XT units to get reviewed, so it'd probably have to be bought retail.
    Reply
  • apazeus
    I've had the 550w version since around October. At one point it was powering an FX-8350 and a 290X with no hiccups. (Nowadays it's paired with a 6600K and a GTX 1080, uses was less juice.) Nice PSUs.
    Reply
  • Aris_Mp
    I cannot explain why ripple at 5VSB during the Crossload tests is higher than the high-temperature tests. This is strange indeed.

    As for the XTs I will try to find one.
    Reply
  • gofasterstripes
    Lol XTR and XT - Someone call Shimano and tell them their electric groupset is looking a big fat!
    Reply
  • Shankovich
    Excellent review. Could you guys possibly redo the Corsair HX 750i and up with the new review parameters? Really interested to see how it is in more detail now.
    Reply
  • damric
    "All XFX PSUs are made by Seasonic"

    Not quite. These are built by Hydance.

    http://www.orionpsudb.com/news/the-mystery-of-xfx-budget-xt-line-solved-oem-and-platform-discovered
    Reply
  • Aris_Mp
    When I state that a unit is made by Seasonic (or any other OEM) it doesn't necessary mean that it is made in its own factories. It is a common practice OEMs to outsource their products to other factories if they cannot meet demand (or in case they want a more affordable production line). However still the original design and the specs are set by the original designer.

    Many other models of various OEMs are also made in other factories but there is no safe way to know it without having info from the OEM itself.

    Finally, this specific article states about the XFX XT units: "If the available information is correct, XFX XT is designed by Seasonic, but the manufacturing is outsourced to Shenzhen Rui Sheng Yuan just like the Hydance. "

    As you can see there is an "if" at the beginning of the sentence. In any case, Seasonic is also behind the XT line. Given that this is an XTR review though, I thought it would be better to spare all above and just state that all XFX PSUs are made by Seasonic and not dive into such detail mentioning the outsourcing of XT line, for which there is no solid information.

    Given the opportunity I would like to mention the great work that Orion does and also thank him for the tip about the KM3S platform of the XTR-850 unit. I will try to find some details about the actual differences between the KM3 and KM3S platforms.
    Reply
  • Math Geek
    i got REAL happy for second there thinking this was one of the budget XTFR units. been waiting for someone, anyone out there to review one so we can see how it performs. they are priced awesome and if they perform even average, they will be worth the low cost for mainstream pc's

    either way, nice review :) always solid work
    Reply