Seasonic Prime 850 W Titanium PSU Review

Seasonic made an impressive entry in the 80 PLUS Titanium category with its Prime series. This line's current flagship, offering 850W capacity, is being reviewed today. Besides high efficiency, it sports quiet operation and top performance.

By published

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 a significant part of its operational range, the SSR-850TD exceeds 94% efficiency. This doesn't happen with a medium load as the 80 PLUS Titanium certification requires, though. Still, that doesn't change the fact that Seasonic's SSR-850TD is among the most efficient PSUs you can buy.

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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Temperatures inside the SSR-850TD are normal, despite the prolonged period that it has to deliver close to maximum power towards the end of our cross-load tests. Very high efficiency makes it easy to avoid large thermal loads, so the PSU's fan has an easy task.

Aris Mpitziopoulos
Aris Mpitziopoulos

Aris Mpitziopoulos is a Contributing Editor at Tom's Hardware US, covering PSUs.
16 Comments Comment from the forums
  • trampus123
    I want one
    Reply
  • Nintendork
    There's no need for CF/SLI anymore, the typical PC + RX480/1080 class gpu barely goes above 300w (even less with APU setups or RX460/1050ti). We need way more 400-500w Titanium PSU's.

    We should have 90% efficiency at 50w load with PSU's in that wattage range.
    Reply
  • WFang
    I'm eagerly anticipating the 600W Passive Seasonic Titanium unit.. I read about it almost a year ago, and still have not seen it tested here ... hope that changes soon.
    Reply
  • LordDrk
    Paid $179 for my EVGA 1000W T2 on ebay =p
    Reply
  • mlga91
    Im not worthy of this one.
    Reply
  • Unolocogringo
    18846027 said:
    There's no need for CF/SLI anymore, the typical PC + RX480/1080 class gpu barely goes above 300w (even less with APU setups or RX460/1050ti). We need way more 400-500w Titanium PSU's.

    We should have 90% efficiency at 50w load with PSU's in that wattage range.

    Just because you do not need one , does not mean others don't.

    I run multiple graphics cards for Folding@Home.The more you can run on each CPU the better. People who run Dual 1080s or dual 39x cards need them to push their 4K monitors.
    So there is a need for them.

    Reply
  • TJ Hooker
    Nintendork said:
    We need way more 400-500w Titanium PSU's.
    We should have 90% efficiency at 50w load with PSU's in that wattage range.
    The thing is, efficiency arguably matters less the lower the power is, because the absolute power being wasted is small. A 500W titanium PSU at max load is only drawing 15W more than a gold rated one. At 50%, 10W. As load drops past 50%, efficiency goes down, but absolute power wasted will still likely go down as well. I don't know, getting a 400W titanium PSU just seems like you're probably paying a lot more money than is necessary for a over engineered PSU which has little to no difference in performance compared to a less efficient, cheaper PSU.
    Reply
  • JV_
    No recommendation award for this one?
    Reply
  • powernod
    Just like Aris stated at his review, i find it amazing how Seasonic managed to generate such a low ripple values without using cable-in capacitors like the rest of the companies do !!
    Reply
  • Aris_Mp
    it has an editor's choice. It will be soon added :)
    Reply