Lian Li just revolutionized PC PSU design, and we’re here for it

It’s fair to say that power supplies don’t usually generate much buzz, with one black metal box usually being much like another, but Lian Li has just pulled a rabbit out of the hat with its latest PSU design. The new range of Lian Li Edge PSUs not only has a completely different shape from your usual PSU, but also brings some intriguing new features to the PC.

This new PSU design takes the modular socket format used by many of the best power supplies right now, but gives it a big twist. Lian Li has made its new power supplies L-shaped, with the bottom of the L now housing all those sockets for modular cables, so they point upwards rather than outwards.

Why would you want that? Well, in a standard PC case where your PSU is under a shroud at the bottom, it won’t make much difference, but with a dual-chamber case, where PSUs are often mounted vertically, it will make cable routing a whole lot easier. It presents all the sockets on a horizontal plate where you can easily see which socket is which and just plug in your wires without any frustrating fiddling.

There’s another interesting feature on these PSUs as well – on the front of the main box of the unit, you’ll see a USB 2 hub. This has one nine-pin header that connects to one of the USB 2 headers on your motherboard (or it can also hook up to your PC’s rear USB 2 ports), and then gives you four nine-pin USB 2 headers on the PSU.

That’s an ideal place to plug in any internal parts that need software control, such as the pump for your AIO cooler. Naturally, Lian Li also cites its own Strimer product, which adds RGB lighting to your PSU cables, as a prime candidate for one of these sockets too.

Three capacities are available in both black and white flavors, with the Lian Li Edge range including 850W, 1,000W, and 1,300W models, and all three of them have 80 Plus Platinum certification, achieving 91-92% efficiency when they’re at 50% load, so hardly any electricity is going to waste. Meanwhile, the 120mm cooling fan only spins up when the PSU needs it, making it quiet when your machine’s components aren’t being challenged.

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.

Lian Li isn’t the first company to change the position of the sockets on a modular PSU, of course. The Corsair RMx Shift lineup also saw these sockets being moved to the side of the PSU, for example, but this is the first time we’ve seen them mounted in this L-shape format.