Installation of the GameXStream went as smoothly as you could expect. That being said, I had no issues during installation.



The 850w unit looks right at home in my test rig.



The sleeved cables really help to keep the wires from getting out of control. Test rig specs below:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ @ 2.7 GHz
850w OCZ GameXStream PSU
2GB OCZ PC-4000 EB Dual Channel DDR
DFI nf4 Lanparty SLI-D
XFX 7800GTX Extreme Edition (490/1300) Card
Noctua Heatsink with Dual 92mm Fans
Hauppauge PVR-150 TV Tuner
Creative Labs X-Fi PCI Sound Card
2x 400GB Seagate 7,200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0 HDDs in RAID 0
120GB Western Digital 8MB Cache 7,200 RPM HDD
74GB Western Digital Raptor HDD
DVD Drive
Seven 120mm Case Fans

And one final picture showing the unit in action.



The blue glow really looks nice from the 120mm LED fan. One thing to note here... notice how short this power supply is. You can see that I have had to remove the top 80mm exhaust fan because my previous power supply was simply too long. This small footprint should really help if you plan to install this unit in a small case.

To record idle voltages, I simply let the system sit idle in Windows. For load voltages, I ran two instances of Prime95 (one per core), Winamp, AIM, multiple FireFox windows and SageTV, all while playing Rainbow Six: Vegas. This combination of programs should fully stress the system components. For the 12v rails, I tested several connectors within the computer and got the average of those numbers, which is reported below. I feel this is better than testing each 12v rail and having a huge chart of results.



I recorded the average voltage which I observed at each setting. Below are the results.



Findings & Conclusion

I must say that this is perhaps the most stable power supply I have had on my test bench to date. The 5v and 3.3v rails would not budge no matter how hard I pushed the test system. The 12v rails were also very stable, with only a .04 fluctuation between average idle and average load. The overall voltage level of the 12v rails did seem a bit high (the highest I have seen on a power supply that I have tested to date). ATX v2.2 Spec calls for +12VDC to be within ± 5%, which would be 12.6v on the upper end. I had no problems out of the unit during testing however, and only wish I had a more powerful test rig on hand to do this unit justice. This power supply should last the average user (and even the high end gamer/overclocker) a few years at minimum. I was a bit surprised to not see quad-SLI support with this unit, but keep in mind you can always purchase a few 4-pin Molex to 6-pin PCI-E adapter should you find the need (or cash) to run four video cards (or two 8800GTX cards in SLI).

Power aside (no pun intended), this really is a great unit. The flat black paint job should fit in nicely with most any themed case. Solid black sleeving on all of the cables give an overall nice look and helps to reduce unsightly wire clutter. Perhaps two of my favorite features are within the power supply. The 120mm blue LED fan is whisper-quiet; I was unable to hear it over the rest of my system. This is a much needed improvement over the EvoStream that I reviewed a few months back. Also, the size of the external casing for this unit is small in comparison to many other high-wattage options available today. This will allow you to use the GameXStream in a wider range of systems (aka smaller cases).

As of writing, the GameXStream 850w Power Supply is going for $219.99 at a popular online retailer.

OCIA.net awards the GameXStream 850w Power Supply our seal of approval.



Thanks to OCZ Technology for supplying us with this review unit.