MSI MAG A850GL PCIE5 850W, ATX 3.1

MSI has built a rather fantastic power supply with the MAG A850GL, and while it’s not the most powerful unit ever at “just” 850W, I suspect that’ll be more than enough power for the majority of high-end PC users. It’s enough power for high-end consumer processors from AMD or Intel, as well as something up to an RTX 4080 or 7900 XTX. However, those pushing towards the most high-end processors or the RTX 4090 would do well to step up to at least a 1000W power supply.

There are two aspects about the MAG A850GL PCIE5 power supply unit by MSI i feel i need to speak of, performance and of course build quality. Performance is good across the board, yes, rail stability may not be superb but it’s still solid and just what I was expecting from such a model. In terms of noise levels again, 120mm fans are never inaudible but around 46dBA at 85% stress load is not great (should easily surpass 50dBA at 100% load however, not that you’d get a PSU to use it at 100%) and even though it shouldn’t be a game breaker I do expect some potential buyers to look elsewhere. Build quality may also be good overall (CWT is among the top OEMs after all) but Taiwanese capacitors are nowhere near as popular and established as Japanese ones, even by well-known manufacturers like CapXon. That’s not to say they are easy to fail but let’s face it, even from just a marketing standpoint these things do matter and that’s why companies always point that feature out (and to be completely honest yes, I’d be more confident with a model using capacitors by Nippon Chemi-Con or Rubycon instead of by Elite and/or CapXon). Finally, being ATX 3.0 and PCIe 5.0 compliant means you’ll probably be using the MAG A850GL for many years to come so no problems here.