OCZ Z Series 80+ 850W

OCZ Z Series 850W 80+

With GPU's gobbling power at unheard rates, it's important to choose your power supply carefully. You may save a few dollars on a bargain power supply but usually in the end, you pay more on the electric bill than you saved. It makes sense opt for a high quality, high performing power supply that might cost a few dollars more but shaves a few bucks off the electric bill each month. At low draw conditions, the OCZ Z 850W power supply hits about 81% efficiency but as load increases it becomes more efficient hittings as high as 91 - 92% efficiency. Let's say you are drawing 500W with that shiny new GPU setup but at idle you're hitting 200W. Your wall socket output at 200W should be in the 245W range (About 80% efficiency) but when you get into gaming, everything on your system kicks in consuming up to 500W. This is typical of GPU's like Nvidia's GF100, dual GPU setups, and dual core GPU's. The OCZ Z 80+ Gold Modular kicks up efficiency to 90+% so your wall sockets power output would be in the 550W range. Now take a typical 70% efficient PSU that costs a few bucks less, your wall socket output at 200W idle would be about 290W as opposed to the OCZ Z 850W's 245W usage which comes in at around 45W less.