Gigabyte Odin 850

Norse mythology or competent powerhouse?

It may not be the best option in this head to head, but we’re quite happy with how the 850W Odin performed.

It merrily powered 18 drives with no stability problems, which means it beats both the Antec and Amacrox 1000W power supplies. Even more amusingly, it’s nipping at the heels of the 1500W models, showing a combination of those expensive and underwhelming things flat out sucking and the Gigabyte PSU punching well above its own weight.

Sure, it gets beaten by the Enermax 850W in terms of raw performance and it doesn’t give you the kind of bang for your buck that the Enermax does either. But if you’re mixing and matching components in an effort to trim the cost of your system and you have a distant, vague and mild concern in your mind when you look at which power supply to get – like that feeling you get when you think about superannuation – you should be safe in the knowledge that this baby will perform adequately and will expand as your PC does.

When you weigh the price and output, we’d place this in third or even second place (we have a three way tie for first) depending on how much you’re prepared to spend.

A middle of the road choice. Except in this case the road happens to be pretty awesome in the first place.