Final Words & Conclusion

Final Words & Conclusion

The Fractal ION+ Platinum series is a good addition to the market. It comes with a 10-year warranty and has 80 Plus Platinum efficiency. It’s also nice that Japanese, 105°C-rated capacitors have been used. Fractal Design also introduced UltraFlex™ DC cabling here: an extremely high strand count with specially formulated insulation made it possible to reduce conductors to just 0.08 mm in diameter – half the thickness of competing products – without losing efficiency or current capacity. The UltraFlex™ cable bends and twists effortlessly, eliminating the inherent hassles of traditional rigid power supply wiring to make installation and cable-routing a breeze. The cables are modular, of course, and appear to be more than sufficient. Even the 660 W variant should be enough for most users with a single graphics card in their systems (not to mention the 860 W one). In reality, a setup like the one used in this test (i7 8700K + Geforce GTX 1080 Ti) rarely exceeds 350 W of power draw. From a technical point of view, the unit is really impressive. Load regulation is great, and there was no noticeable droop on both +5V and +12V rails. Ripple suppression is well below tolerance levels. The 140 mm fan does its job in an excellent manner. It’s barely audible even close to 75% load. The efficiency of this Fractal PSU is great, reaching the declared values from the platinum-level certificate with ease. As for the accessories, you get the mounting screws, a Velcro strap, a bag for the cables, and a manual.

A word about efficiency

Same as with any other power supply, 50% of the maximum load is where the device is at its most efficient. At this sweet spot, the Fractal ION+ PLATINUM achieved a bit above 92 % (at 230 Volts). In the case of this particular unit, half of the maximum wattage is 375 W. The average gaming PC with a single graphics card (at least the ones that are usually spotted in Steam hardware polls) won’t exceed this value in normal conditions. Don’t overestimate the savings (electric bill) that you can make by going from 80 Plus Bronze to even Titanium. You can assume that the build quality of a more expensive PSUs will be higher, but the differences in efficiency are not that significant. So, summing it up, an 80 Plus Platinum PSU like the Fractal ION+ Platinum reviewed here is a perfect solution. The price is about 118 EUR for the 660 W variant, and 140 EUR for the 860 W one.

Stability

There really isn’t much to say about stability. The voltages are stable even under higher loads. The 660 W version, and of course 860 W one (there are also 560/760 variants available), should be enough even for dual-GPU setups with cards like an Nvidia Geforce GTX/RTX 1070/2070.

Aesthetics

The Fractal PSU looks very nice with all-black cabling. The modular design lets you plug in only the leads that you really need, and this will certainly improve the looks of your build. 

Final words

The ION+ Platinum retails at 117.99/139.99 EUR (660/860 W respectively), which is a very good price. It offers sleek looks (though nowadays it’s most likely to be hidden in a shroud), great acoustics, and very good build quality. The fully modular design makes life easier because you can use only the cables that you really need (still - you always plug the 24-pin and 4/8-pin ATX connector anyway). The 10-year warranty is very good: on par with Corsair’s, but still worse than Seasonic’s (12 years).  In fact, all this is really nitpicking (raise your hands if you keep your PSUs longer than about 6-8 years in a constantly upgraded PC). Overall, we can recommend this one – it’s a very good unit for a reasonable price (considering the features).

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