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OCZ Z Series: Z850M 850W Power Supply Review

Today we see what OCZ means when it says, "True to our enthusiast roots..." OCZ claims ultra-high efficiency and has gotten an 80plus.org Gold Certification. The 850 watt realm has proved elusive for great power supplies. Now to see if this PSU can garner an [H] "certification?"

Overview

The first thing we are going to look at with the OCZ Z850M is the packaging, accessories, and documentation. While normally none of these items is a make or break item for a power supply the packaging quite often contains a lot of information about the product we are purchasing. The inclusion of an owner’s manual that provides actual information about our product is also of great help. Accessories are almost unnecessary with a power supply as the unit is self contained, unless it is modular, but there cases where a manufacturer can include useful accessories to make installation, routing and use more efficient.

The packaging for the OCZ Z850M is trimmed out in black and gold. Among the many things advertised on this unit’s packaging is the fact that it is 80Plus Gold certified which one would assume is part of the reasoning for the unit’s color scheme. Of course when we look over at the 80Plus website we find that both this unit and the 1000 watt model are currently certified for 80Plus Gold as advertised. In addition to this, the unit is billed as being SLI certified, multi-GPU ready, and as sporting "4 6/8-pin PCIE" connectors. However, at the time of writing the OCZ Z850M was not certified for any level of SLI according to the SLIZone website. Additionally, we find a lot of marketing points, the power table (broken down below), connector count (also broken down below), and the listing for a 5 year warranty. This is certainly better than many of the 3 year warranties we have seen and should be about the minimum we would expect from good high end units.

From the power information available with the Z850M we see a couple of interesting points. The first being that the unit has a single 12v rail which is billed as being capable of 71A or 852W which is just a touch over 100% of the unit’s total capacity. Something about that number seems a bit "iffy." Moving on, the unit has a total of four modified 8-pin PCI-Express connectors good for most SLI configurations, and with "71A" available on the 12v rail it should be able to run most basic SLI configurations. Additionally, we find the unit comes equipped with twelve SATA connectors for RAID arrays and SATA optical drives which is good as the unit only has three "legacy" Molex connectors. All in all, this unit should be fairly well equipped for the high end, even if the 71A 12v rating seems a bit odd.

Once open the OCZ Z850M packaging we find the power supply in a bag, a pouch containing the modular cables and power cord, the mounting screws, some Velcro fasteners and he user manual. The user manual is 33 pages long in 8 languages and is interesting. The manual includes the power table from the packaging, installation instructions, pinouts, some basic troubleshooting steps, and the warranty information. Where the manual goes horribly wrong is that it isn’t complete by any means and the pinouts list the unit as having four 12v rails followed by the manual listing the warranty terms as being 3 years not 5 years (which is even stamped on the outside of the manual). From the OCZ website it would appear that the warranty is 5 years but the Power Swap page does list 3 and 5 year warranties. When all is said and done let’s just hope if the unit is going to bite it, it does so in 3 years so users don’t get hung up in this oh so clear warranty program.