XPG Core Reactor Gold ATX Power Supply Review

1. Introduction, Specifications, and Pricing
2. Packaging
3. Hardware & Documentation
4. XPG Core Reactor Gold Power Supply
5. Real World Test System & Observations
6. Final Thoughts

TweakTown's Rating: 97%

The Bottom Line

The new Core Reactor series from XPG is an excellent start for an up and coming PSU offering. These units offer comparable performance and warranty as the competition in a 140mm footprint.

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Introduction, Specifications, and Pricing

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XPG is a brand that most are probably less familiar with it as it started life as the gaming entity or subsidiary of ADATA. While it is still the gaming brand and a division of ADATA, they now have brought it to the market as the primary gaming brand name and, for the most part, distances itself from the ADATA corporate branding. We recently had some experience with XPG chassis, and now we have their new Core Reactor series of power supplies. This means XPG is working to become another brand that offers a large amount of the necessary components for a DIY PC build, similar to the path we watched Corsair take.

XPG is focusing on gaming as a brand, so their PSUs are not at insanely high wattages, but a more refined option of 850W and lower at least for now. In all honesty, most gaming rigs can run just fine on a 550W - 850W supply depending upon configuration and be within a nominal efficiency range as well. So for this, I think XPG picked an excellent area to top out for now as these units will apply to most mainstream gamers.

Key features from XPG are as follows:

• 80 Plus Gold Certified
• Premium 100% Japanese Capacitors
• Compact with Modular Design
• Intelligent, Low-Noise Fan-Curve
• Industrial-Grade Protection
• 10-Year Warranty

The gold rating is solid and means that the build overall should be reliable and of favorable quality. The ten-year warranty, while the standard for PSU, is a good indication that XPG has confidence in the unit quality as they are bound to support it for ten years and offer a replacement if it were to falter. That is a long time as most mainstream gamers rebuild every 3 -5 years, and this means this unit could last through 3 or even four system builds. Also, if still working, at that point, you would want to replace the unit due to capacitor aging, but that is another story for another time. One thing XPG did not mention is the fact that all of their PSUs have Lambda ratings of A with only the 850W seeing an A- in the acoustics department due to its higher nominal fan speed.

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The Core Reactor supplies come in three total wattages; 650W, 750W, and 850W. The two units we have today are the 750W and 850W. The part numbers are COREREACTOR750G-BKCUS, and COREREACTOR850G-BKCUS respectively, and I always welcome part numbers that are easy to distinguish as it makes it much easier to associate what you find with what you are looking for, so kudos to XPG for that one. All of the XPG Core Reactor units are 140mm, which is as compact as an ATX power supply can get, and that is great as it means that chassis fitment should not be much of a concern.

We found the ADATA XPG Reactor series PSUs listed for $119.99 for the 750W model and 129.99 for the 850W. The 850W is head to head with the top competitors in the $129 range, including the EVGA Supernova 850 G+, RM750x from Corsair (which is at $134.99), which are both reliable gold-rated units at 100 watts less. The 750W unit finds itself in a head to head bout with the almost same lineup being led by the EVGA Supernova 650 G+ at the same price point and the RM650x coming in at $125.99. This makes sense as XPG is likely trying to match and slightly beat the market asking price for a specific feature set. I believe XPG did this, and as long as they perform as we would expect, they could take a commanding spot in the market.

Shannon's Power Supply Test System Specifications

• Motherboard: ASUS Zenith Extreme Alpha (buy from Amazon)
• CPU: AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX (buy from Amazon)
• Cooler: Custom Alphacool CPU Liquid Cooling (buy from Amazon)
• Memory: Corsair Vengeance RGB 3000MHz 32GB (buy from Amazon)
• Video Card: NVIDIA TITAN V (buy from Amazon)
• Video Card: NVIDIA TITAN Xp Collectors Edition (buy from Amazon)
• Video Card: NVIDIA GTX 1080 Ti (buy from Amazon)
• Storage: SanDisk M.2 256GB
• Power Supply: XPG Core Reactor Gold (buy from Amazon)
• OS: Microsoft Windows 10 Home 64-bit (buy from Amazon)

XPG Core Reactor Gold Power Supply

	Today	Yesterday	7 days ago	30 days ago
	$89.99	$89.99	$89.99	$89.99	Buy
* Prices last scanned on 4/18/2024 at 9:27 am CDT - prices may not be accurate, click links above for the latest price. We may earn an affiliate commission.

Packaging

The front of the boxes for both are similar minus the wattage listing. XPG made good use of the box face to show the PSU, along with explaining the unit is modular and, of course, gold-rated and carries a ten-year warranty. The XPG logo can be found at the top right, but there is something to be said for a clean package devoid of most of the marketing iconography that can easily sneak its way onto the packaging.

The rear of the packaging once again shows that these PSUs are close to being the same with the same modular output connections and even the same cable sets. The difference comes into play in the output table, which shows the variation of amperage and wattage rating for each model, and the fan curve graph at the bottom left. That fan curve, as you can see is a bit more aggressive with the 850 starting the fan ramp at 50% loading and topping out at just shy of 1800RPM, while the 750W unit starts to ramp the fan upwards at 60% loading and tops out just shy of 60%.

The flap you open to see the PSU is where we look next, and once again, all of the feature bullets here are the same. The only difference is the two locations where it lists the wattage. The features call out the stack of protections, along with other features and Gold efficiency rating. The feature set is set in front of a background image of the fan grille with the XPG logo in the center.

Spinning to the opposing end, and we see the area where you can scan the QR code to learn about the products XPG offers, specifically the Core Reactor series. Also, here is the company information and the inventory management label. This label is one of the only areas you will see in this section where the two differ as it carries the serial number, the part number, and EAN/JAN codes. Also, below and around the label, we find the various certifications and compliance iconography.

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Flipping open the package, we find that the contents look the same as would be expected. We have the sticker set and manual sitting atop the foam surrounding the PSU itself. The Velcro sealed bag is seated adjacent to the PSU and contains the modular cable sets.

Hardware & Documentation

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The modular cable set comes in an XPG branded satchel, which is something we have seen before. The quality is excellent and not thin fibrous material, as we have seen with some other units. You can rest assured that any spare cables can be stowed away in your spare parts are or drawer ion this bag without fear of tearing over time.

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The modular cable sets are identical for the 750W, and 850W units we have on hand. The cable array is as follows:

• Main AC input cable
• 24-pin ATX cable
• 2x 4+4 EPS CPU power cables
• 4x PCIe Cables (6 total 6+2-pin connections)
• PATA peripheral lead (4 total PATA connections)
• 3x SATA peripheral leads (12 total SATA connections)

The cable set it stout for this level of supply. One concern is the amount of 6+2 connectors, which could allow up to triple GPUs on not only an 850 but also a 750W supply. For most use cases, this would be fine, but I do fear that in a heavily loaded environment such as a workstation deployment, this could easily reach an overload scenario for the PSU. We will test the limit of both of these supplies in the testing portion of the review.

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The manual is generic for the Core Reactor gold series PSU's, so it covers all three units (650W, 750W, and 850W). The manual is a multi-page booklet and comes along with a sticker sheet that we have seen included before with XPG chassis in the past.

XPG Core Reactor Gold Power Supply

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The PSU itself comes in a semi-opaque bubble wrap bag. This helps ensure that the PSU itself arrives with less chance of damage beyond the protection of the soft black foam caps which surround it, provide.

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The fan on the XPG Core Reactor series is 120mm based units. The fan grille is a standard wire style with parallel bars running across versus the typical circular grille bar pattern. The center fan and grille hub is covered with a metallic XPG logo badge.

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Flipping the unit ninety degrees, and we can now view the side which you will see if your chassis has no PSU shroud or your shroud has a window. XPG has ensured that their logo stays right side up with the fan pointing down, which has become the standard in most all current chassis. The PSU body has triangular indentations, which are aesthetic pieces and help frame the decorative side decal, which is custom shaped to fit between the indentations. The sticker has a neat artistic style as they included a 25% logo being cut off by the end of the decal, which gives it a unique look.

Moving to the top side opposite of the fan grille and we see the label. This is one area where the two supplies differ as the 850W unit has a total 12V rail amperage of 70.38, while the 750W unit shows 62.5. The other minor rails (3.3V, 5V, etc.) show no change between the two units. The AC input spec changes, but strangely enough, the 750W gold combines 100-240Vac while the 850 breaks down the input between the two voltage ranges.

Here we flip over to the other side with the label, and I included both here as you can see the main large label as well so that you can visually confirm they are indeed identical minus the spec rating label.

Here we look at the AC input side of the PSU, and both units are shown once again as you can see each unit's main label. Each has the main input connector and main power toggle. Looking inside the PSU, we can see that the layout is visually similar between the two units, at least on this side of both.

Lastly, we move to the modular output side of the PSU. As you can see, both units have identical output connections, which makes sense as their cable array is also identical.

Real World Test System & Observations

Core Reactor 850W Testing

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First up, we have the 850W gold unit from the XPG Core Reactor family. We pushed the CPU a bit to increase how much power it will gobble up, which quickly placed us in the 750 - 790W range under a real-world render load hitting both the CPU and GPU. The 850W took this in stride with no stability issues under several hours of loading, and the fan did ramp as expected, but it was not obnoxiously loud. The cooling for the thick 360 CPU cooling radiator and GPU blower fan both outpaced the PSU regarding noise output.

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Adding a 2080 Ti into the mix, and we observed wattages up to 1100W and as low as 1005W during the rendering workload, which is now beating on not just the CPU but two hungry GPUs. The fan ramped more, and the noise could not be distinguished if very close to the unit, but the coolers for the GPU and liquid cooling were still able to be louder if not comparable. The good news here is that this little 850W unit held on for the ride, and while the 55C internal temp is not something I would want 24/7, it did withstand the torture without the slightest hint of instability or errors in the workflow for several hours of running. While I would never recommend loading a PSU to this level for any sort of real work, it is a good sign when you can push this kind of load to a power supply and not have it pop, but please if you need this much power, pick something rated for it.

Core Reactor 750W Testing

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Now we have the 750W unit, and we left the CPU cranked up a bit. We did lower The CPU draw a bit compared to the 850W unit, and we kicked off the workload. This time the 750W unit ramped as expected, and at a load ranging from 720 - 770W, we observed perfect stability with a temp up to 52C, which the fan well managed. There were no errors during the workload stress test and no instability or issues observed.

With that being said, we did try to add the 2080 Ti, but it was more of a dream than anything and the unit shutoff under that load after 37 minutes. The total load drawn during that time was around 1040W, which proved to be a bit too much for the 750W Core Reactor. This must be taken with a grain of digital salt as most users are not going to deploy a 250W+ 2990WX CPU with overclocking and multiple GPUs on a 750W gold-rated unit. But the converse to this is that a user deploying a rig with, for example, triple 2080 Ti's and an 8700K, could potentially overload this unit simply based on the GPU pull, even though the PSU has the cabling to support it. My advice to XPG would be to drop the number of PCIe connectors to four on this unit to help avoid this accidental occurrence.

Final Thoughts

When I first heard XPG was going to send me a PSU, the first thought was, "Wait, XPG makes PSUs?" Well yes, as you can see, XPG offers PSU models, and while many may suspect them to be mediocre, I found a bit different. The Core Reactor supplies did their job and performing well. The 750W unit did not go crazy high above its rated capacity, but when we did test it, we found it rock stable for a configuration I would expect to max out a 750W supply. The 850W, however, I found not to be lacking and quite a stout unit capable of current well over what should ever be demanded of it.

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What we like

I do like that XPG offers a stout supply that matches the level of performance and stability that I would expect from the well-established contenders such as EVGA and Corsair. The units even the slightly louder 850W unit were no louder than the components being tested, and that was a surprise to see the refinement you come to expect from a long development cycle. To be fair, this is likely a benefit form the OEM XPG chose to work with for these units. The cable sets are well sorted, and the connector arrangement makes sense for a PSU you would actually use. To top this all off, XPG delivers this at a 140mm length which is probably one of the biggest highlights is overall compatibility.

What do we think could be better?

The XPG units are well built and capable, but like everything, there are areas we could see improved. One would be the 750W cable array, which I would suggest lowering the PCIe 6+2 connector count to four; this will ensure that the risk of having a build that will overload the supply to be substantially lower. The other part of the equation is availability as ADATA/XPG does not seem to have a lot of these units out there, and I could not even find it on the ADATA/XPG webpage store.

Now we get to the value portion of the conclusion, and I have to say that the Core Reactor series is worth a recommendation. Both units delivered what I would expect them to and are well built to handle a seriously heavy load. As long as you are not a brand fanboy, there is no reason you should not consider one of these units, as they offer the same warranty length as the more well-known PSU brands but at a real-world value.

Shannon's Power Supply Test System Specifications

• Motherboard: ASUS Zenith Extreme Alpha (buy from Amazon)
• CPU: AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX (buy from Amazon)
• Cooler: Custom Alphacool CPU Liquid Cooling (buy from Amazon)
• Memory: Corsair Vengeance RGB 3000MHz 32GB (buy from Amazon)
• Video Card: NVIDIA TITAN V (buy from Amazon)
• Video Card: NVIDIA TITAN Xp Collectors Edition (buy from Amazon)
• Video Card: NVIDIA GTX 1080 Ti (buy from Amazon)
• Storage: SanDisk M.2 256GB
• Power Supply: XPG Core Reactor Gold (buy from Amazon)
• OS: Microsoft Windows 10 Home 64-bit (buy from Amazon)