XPG Cybercore 1300W Review: We Might Have A Problem Here

If you’re reading this, we’re sure you’re familiar with what’s happening in the GPU market. By the time this review goes live, you will have a good picture of NVIDIA’s next-gen graphics cards in the RTX 4000 series. While they are truly next-gen, what’s not great is their power draw. The top-tier RTX 4090 variant requires an 850 Watt PSU, which begs the need for an incredibly powerful Power Supply. To give you an idea, that’s more than twice the power that my existing build consumes (500W)

At first glance, XPG’s 1300W Cybercore power supply looks more than enough, but it’s an ATX 2.0 PSU, and 4090 requires 3.0. This raises the question, “Should you buy an ATX 2.0 PSU or wait for ATX 3.0.” Fortunately. OEMs have devised a workaround for this, which we’ll be looking at later in the article.

While we didn’t have a 4090 to test it, we can give you some demographics about its performance based on our existing build. Here’s our Cybercore 1300W review.

XPG Cybercore 1300 Review: What’s in the Box?

The outer packaging is quite different compared to XPGs older power supply packages. The unboxing experience was nothing extraordinary, but there was ample protection and cushioning around the power supply. Here’s everything you’ll get in the box.

• Cybercore 1300 PSU
• A bag full of cables (More on this later)
• User manual
• XPG Stickers
• Zip ties
• Thumb screws

Build quality

Like most XPG power supplies, the build quality of the Cybercore 1300W is robust. The components are cooled by a 120mm Nidec fan, which has denser and more number fins compared to the Cybercore 850 to help with the cooling. The grille on top of the fan is sturdy and very well built.

There’s a hexagonal-shaped Cybercore sticker on either side of the PSU, and the sticker at the bottom shows you the power output numbers.

The best thing about it is its size. Despite packing a whopping 1300 watts of power, the PSU is surprisingly compact (160mm long). The overall shape is more rectangular than a cube like the Core Reactor 850W that we reviewed last month, and I did run into issues while fitting it into the PSU bay on my AeroCool Mini Tower case. A little extensive pushing worked out in the end. Also, AeroCool, your cabinets suck. Please bring something good and interesting.

At the back, you’ll find the power connector and its switch. The number of connectors present on this thing will make you dizzy. Thanks to the well-labeled connectors, we didn’t run into trouble while inserting cables in them. Good job, XPG!

I don’t have any gripe with the design, but I wish the PSU came with an IPS or OLED display on the right side (the side that point towards the tempered glass of a cabinet), which shows how much power is being pulled by the PC. ASUS did it with its 1200W ROG Thor. The added convenience of checking the power usage and having peace of mind that your PC is pulling out optimal power goes a long way. Not to mention, it looks cool.

Cables, Cables, and Cables

The included cables weigh twice as much as the power supply and judging by that, and you may have guessed their quality. The plastics used in the connectors are of excellent quality. The wires are sleeves and therefore look clean inside the PC. Here are all the cables that XPG included in the box.

• Power cable
• 24-Pin ATX Motherboard cable
• 2 x FDD adapters
• 3 x four-SATA cables
• 2 x Molex
• 5 x PCIe 6+2 cables + 2 x PCIe (6+2) + (6+2) cables.
• 2 x CPU cables

Pro tip: Wear gloves while plugging these cables into the PSU connectors. Your dominant hand will thank you.

The ATX 2.0 and 3.0 confusion

The 4090 series supports a new ATX standard by Intel called 12VHPWR. An ATX 3.0 PSU comes with a 16-pin connector (12+4) instead of your standard 6-pin connector. The standard not only delivers more power, but the four extra pins communicate with the graphics card, and depending on the size of the same, power will be supplied.

To solve this problem, OEMs will be including an adapter cable in the Graphics card boxes, which is essentially a 16-pin to four PCIe power connector, but there’s an issue. While the Cybercore 1300W can do 108.33 amps over the 12V rail, the 4090 would be pulling up to 45 amps from a single rail, and that’s still after factoring out the output needed to power other components.

With the included adapter, the Cybercore 1300W could technically handle it, but it’d be safer to get an ATX 3.0 PSU. If you’re not buying a 4090 and aiming to hook up two graphics cards, you will need 1300W of power. Here’s a video from JayzTwoCents to help you understand it better.

How does it perform?

We didn’t have the components to test the full might of the power supply, but we did test it out at around 40% load. And the results were pretty good.

For starters, the fan noise at 40% load was around 47 decibels. The intake and exhaust temperatures stayed under 45℃ most of the time. You could expect the exhaust temps to go up at around 700W, but the intake terms will mostly remain in the ballpark of 45-50℃. Now, we can’t comment on efficiency as we lack the tools to test the same, but as the PSU is Platinum-rated, expect an efficiency of over 92% under half of the load.

Now, this number will go down depending on the load and no matter how efficient a PSU is. More load will produce more heat; hence, more power is lost in the process. The efficiency is further impacted due to a smaller 120mm fan compared to a 140mm. XPG claims that the PSU can run at 60℃ and last for 60,000 hours, which is pretty impressive. Here are the output voltages of the Cybercore 1300W.

At around 40% load, the fan spins at 800rpm, which isn’t a lot, and when combined with Nidec’s engineering, the fan noise is almost non-existent.

XPG Cybercore 1300W Review: Conclusion

While it may make more sense to wait for an ATX 3.0 power supply, if you plug in a 4090 with the provided adapter, it should work fine since the 12V rail provides 108 amps of current. However, a better use case would be if you want to use two GPUs. Other ADATA products are pretty compelling for gamers, and the Cybercore 1300W is no different.