It’s fair to say that power supplies don’t usually get much attention as their black metal boxes look pretty much like any other box, but Lian Li has managed to pull off the unexpected with their latest PSU design. Leanne Lee Edge Not only does the PSU have a completely different shape than your regular PSU, but it also brings some interesting new features to your PC.
This new PSU design uses the modular socket format used by many of the best power supplies today, but with a big twist: Lian Li made the new power supplies L-shaped, and the bottom of the L is where all of the sockets for the modular cables fit, so the cables face up instead of outwards.
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Why would you need that? Well, in a standard PC case where the PSU is under a bottom cover, it doesn’t make much difference, but in dual-chamber cases where the PSU is often mounted vertically, it makes cable routing a lot easier: all the sockets are located on a horizontal plate, so it’s easy to see which socket is which and you can just plug in the cable without any hassle.
These PSUs have one other interesting feature: there’s a USB 2 hub on the front of the main box of the unit. This has a single 9-pin header that connects to one of the USB 2 headers on your motherboard (or you can connect it to a USB 2 port on the back of your PC), giving the PSU four 9-pin USB 2 headers.
This is a great place to plug in internal components that require software control, such as a pump for an AIO cooler. Naturally, Lian Li also lists its own Strimer products, which add RGB lighting to PSU cables, as prime candidates for these sockets.
The Lian Li Edge series comes in three capacities in both black and white, with 850W, 1,000W, and 1,300W models. All three are 80 Plus Platinum certified and achieve 91-92% efficiency at 50% load, so there’s little to no wasted power. Meanwhile, the 120mm cooling fan only spins when the PSU needs it, so it’s quiet when your machine’s components are not under load.
The Lian Li PSUs are available to pre-order now, with prices starting at $149.99 (£129.95) for the 850W black model, and going up to $239.99 (£204.95) for the 1,300W white version.
Of course, Lian Li isn’t the first company to change the location of sockets on a modular PSU – the Corsair RMx Shift lineup also moved these sockets to the side of the PSU, for example – but this is the first time they’ve been mounted in this L-shaped format.