Cooler Master V850 SFX Gold Power Supply Review

Several years ago, there was an explosion of Mini ITX motherboards that flooded market and with it followed an uptick in SFF supporting parts including cases and power supplies.  While the Mini ITX form factor had been around for years it was largely ignored due to the lack of computing power and limited chassis options. 

This was not genesis of the SFX power supply but, it did help bring it to the forefront and allowed case makers options for making cases smaller while still allowing off the shelf components to be used.  It also allowed motherboard makers freedom to develop more powerful Mini ITX motherboards including some based on the X299 and Z490 chipsets.

In this review we looked at the Cooler Master V850 SFX Gold Power Supply.  This is a SFX power supply that is primarily intended for SFF (Small Form Factor) system builds but will work equally well in a full tower system using the included adaptor plate. 

I should mention that this is not the first SFX power supply I have looked at and while the 850w and 80 Plus gold rating are impressive this is not the most powerful or most efficient SFX PSU on the market.  However, the specs are no accident.  You can currently get the V Series SFX PSUs in wattages ranging from 550w up to 850w which encompass the majority of what is needed for a mainstream gaming build.

Despite the small size the CM V850 SFX Gold is quite powerful.  To test this PSU I decided to subject it to the normal rigors of the Hardware Asylum test bench.  These antics were discussed in Episode 118 which involved an Overclocked Core i9 10900k @ 5.3Ghz and an Overclocked RTX 2080 Super @ 2130Mhz which eventually captured a (short lived) Gold Cup overclock on HWBOT.  While the power draw for this system was well within the range of an 850w PSU it was a little surreal to see everything being powered by a micro of a PSU.

Overall, I’m rather impressed with the Cooler Master V850 SFX Gold PSU, it does exactly what you would expect from a power supply, has fully modular cables and comes with a rather good cooling solution.  The 92mm fan only turns on when total load exceeds 15% indicating it will start cooling only when it needs to and thus keep overall noise down.  The smaller fan does mean it will be louder than a full sized ATX PSU but, when you consider that SFF systems generally require more airflow it will easily blend in with the other fans in the system.  Given that this product is intended for SFF builds the cables are shorter but leave plenty of slack to reach all of the important components without leaving too much extra cable.