Packaging

The packaging is quite large, even for a high capacity PSU and features a gaming-vivid design with the figure of Wendel along with a photo of the unit taking over the front real estate. On the front bottom side, with large white fonts there is a description of the unit's capacity and the indy-sleeved cables; while in the front, bottom, right corner there are two badges for the 80 Plus Gold efficiency and the five year warranty. On the rear side of the box we find more detailed info about its features and a description of its technical specifications. The most interesting info in this area is that the unit is equipped with Japanese caps, has a single +12V rail, can deliver its full power continuously even at 50°C ambient and that during the five year warranty, if a problem occurs the unit will be replaced before the old one arrives at OCZ's service center, something that significantly reduces RMA waiting time.

Contents

Once we opened the unit the figure of Wendel, on the cover of the user's manual, gazed at as. Apparently OCZ used his figure everywhere on this PSU and its package/bundle. Two quite thick pieces of packing foam protect the unit and the latter is stored in a sleek white cloth bag while an extra nylon bag offers some additional protection. A nice black pouch stores all modular cables and the rest of the bundle includes several zip ties, an AC power cord and a set of black fixing bolts. We would like to see some Velcro ties in the bundle, too, but OCZ didn't do us this favor.

Exterior

The external looks of the Fatal1ty is cool and the side decals with Wendel's figure (and his signature) match the whole design. Also the build quality is high and the black finish looks good too. On the front we meet a classy honeycomb design exhaust grill and a heavy duty On/Off switch right next to the AC receptacle. On the rear side resides the modular panel with the red sockets and the fixed cables, which thankfully are the minimum required for a modern system (the 24pin ATX, two PCIe and one EPS connector). All are indy-sleeved, something that has a negative effect on their footprint and unfortunately the cable exit hole is not equipped with a grommet so the cables are protected by the casing edges only by their sleeving. Thankfully the hole is large enough so at least the cables are not squeezed. The fan's blades are transparent and it also features LED lighting, which unfortunately cannot be turned off. Finally, the specifications label is located on the bottom side so it won't bother those who want to show off their PSU through a side window.

A Closer Look at the Individually-Sleeved cables

Surely the indy-sleeved cables look nice and cool but on the other hand they are more bulky than the normal sleeved ones so cable management is going to be tougher. Also sleeving is not top notch, at least compared to high quality indy-sleeved jobs done by enthusiast modders. To be more exact the heat shrinks used at each connector protrude enough from the connector itself and they are not deep enough inside each connector hole. The outcome is not much of an eye candy, at least to a pro modder's eye and on top of that we noticed that some heat-shrinks started to go off the connectors' holes. This is visible on the bottom-most pin in the first photo above.
Despite the quality problems we spotted on the indy-sleeving job, this is the first time that a company includes this feature in a PSU so it is natural that the process still isn't perfect. Also these observations were made having in mind pro indy-sleeving implementations so a regular user probably won't be so picky.