Sparkle Computer Gold Class 850W Power Supply Review

Conclusions
Of course I didn’t have the thousands of dollars worth of equipment to check to see if the Sparkle Computer Gold Class 850 actually does meet the 80Plus Program’s standards for 80Plus “Gold” certification. I’ll defer to those with the time and money to do that testing, and trust the 80Plus’ engineers’ findings. I am more concerned whether or not a power supply will do what it is supposed to do. An 850 Watt power supply should power the pair of Radeon cards used in the testing with a little voltage drop under load. The Gold Class 850 had a minimum of drop, only .1v. I thought it did an excellent job.

It has been a while since I’ve received a modular power supply, nearly every one I’ve looked at in the past two years were not modular. I had gotten to the point where I thought that I didn’t care one way or the other…but modular power supplies are nice in an application where a minimum of cables are being used. I did have to use all four PCI-E cables, but only used one each of the Molex and SATA power cables.

The power supply looks a little different with its purple connectors. All cables are nicely finished with black mesh and heavy heat shrink. All connectors are gold plated. Cables are long enough for cable management on a mid tower…they are also long enough for use in a full tower but not the extra long cables found on some power supplies, which aid in cable management on a full tower but really hinder it on a mid tower.

Other than the use of very high quality electrical components in the construction of a PSU, it is pretty hard to find something different or fairly unique to point out in a power supply review. The Sparkle Computer Gold Class power supplies all have gold plated connectors and filtering on the 24pin connector. That’s the kind of attention to detail I like to see.

The best thing about the Sparkle Computer Gold Class 850 watt power supply is the price…it sells for $179.99 at my favorite online retailer. A good price for a “name brand” 850 watt 80Plus “Gold” power supply. ThinkComputers.org gives the Sparkle Computer Gold Class 850 watt power supply a 10 out of 10 score.

rating10 10 small

Pros:
– 80Plus Gold Certified
– Modular Construction
– Extra filtering to help RF interference
– Gold plated connectors

Cons:
– None that I found