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Fractal Design has enriched its PSU portfolio with more affordable versions of the Ion+ Platinum models, with Gold efficiency and fully modular cables. Unfortunately, the provided warranty has also dropped to seven years from ten. For the internals, the filtering caps on the secondary side are not by a Japanese manufacturer but by Teapo. The cooling fan also uses a lower quality bearing instead of a fluid dynamic bearing. These are the typical changes when you want to keep good performance levels but lower the production cost.
The Ion Gold with 850W capacity cannot meet the performance levels of other popular products in this category, but this doesn't necessarily mean that it is a bad product. On the contrary, it offers decent performance levels for its price. Nonetheless, the more expensive competition in this category uses higher-quality parts. They offers higher performance, too. The Fractal Design Ion Gold 850W is a strong budget contender, but buyers serious about power supplies will want to pay more for something like a Corsair RM850x with the new ML fan or an XPG Core Reactor 850. There is also the highly popular Seasonic GX-850. All three of these PSUs cost about 40 dollars more as of writing, which is a notable difference for power supplies.
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Disclaimer: Aris Mpitziopoulos is Tom's Hardware's PSU reviewer. He is also the Chief Testing Engineer of Cybenetics and developed the Cybenetics certification methodologies apart from his role on Tom's Hardware. Neither Tom's Hardware nor its parent company, Future PLC, are financially involved with Cybenetics. Aris does not perform the actual certifications for Cybenetics.
