News - Corsair Professional Series Gold PSUs sail into retail

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Super-efficient high-performance power-supplies now available

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Read more.

Gorgeous, but where's the 350W option? With such efficiency and quality that's all most of us need.

That's not how efficiency works :P

These are very high-end units and also very noisy, and overpriced. To me it seems like Corsair exploiting its status as a reliable PSU manufacturer, and them overcharging on that basis. Why they refuse to replicate one of their best-selling features, quietness, of the HX520/620/VX450/TX650 in any of their other units baffles me. The AX units are horrendously loud, as are the HX1000 and CX400. This fact has seen me switch to Nexus and Zalman for my PSUs as they do the same job about 20dB quieter, be it for 120W or for 700W.

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Originally Posted by kalniel

Gorgeous, but where's the 350W option? With such efficiency and quality that's all most of us need.

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Enermax have a highly efficient 350W option. Only 86% efficiency but it's better than other PSU's at the same output. http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/350W-...ready!-24-740C

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Originally Posted by sammorris

These are very high-end units and also very noisy, and overpriced. To me it seems like Corsair exploiting its status as a reliable PSU manufacturer, and them overcharging on that basis. Why they refuse to replicate one of their best-selling features, quietness, of the HX520/620/VX450/TX650 in any of their other units baffles me. The AX units are horrendously loud, as are the HX1000 and CX400. This fact has seen me switch to Nexus and Zalman for my PSUs as they do the same job about 20dB quieter, be it for 120W or for 700W.

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I agree. Although I use Enermax almost exclusively now, less than 18dB across their new range> http://www.anandtech.com/show/2920/10

The older Modu/Pro 82+ units were also very quiet.

PS: Most computers use less power than the recommended PSU for their components. Manufacturers always say their products require more power than it actually does because they can't control the quality of the PSU's customers have. IE an Enermax Modu82+ 525W with it's 3x 12v rails at 25A each can easily handle a GTX280 while a Powercool 550W with only 2x 12v rails at 16A each would battle.

I'm still not convinced with my Enermax (I've got the Revolution85+ 850W - the only Revo85+ I could get at the time). I'm getting random and very infrequent reboots (once every couple of weeks or so)... but only at idle, and never under load - and my PC is under load quite often. I can't think of anything else it could be and 90% of the components have remained the same from my previous PSU - if it were hardware elsewhere you'd usually get a BSOD and a crash dump to play with, but it's a clean reboot with zero warning.

For reference, my previous Seasonic refused to work correctly with motherboards which went beyond specification at boot. I thought my Gigabyte board was faulty, only to replace it with a DFI and then found out that DFI themselves said that their boards were incompatible with Seasonic PSUs - as close as you'll get to them saying "our boards don't stick to specification on power-on... you'll have to get a PSU which allows us to pull more than it should".

Shame, as that X-series Seasonic is epic stuff. Still, the Revo85+ isn't bad, so long as it's not the cause of my random idle reboots.


Edit: I'd say the high-end Enermax PSUs are 2nd only to Seasonic, and it's to Corsair's detriment that they don't openly publish who makes each supply - even it's only a subtle 'S' or 'C' in a model name. I wouldn't buy a Corsair (with or without a 7 year warranty) if it were made by CWT, but if it were made by Seasonic it would be 2nd on my list only behind Seasonic themselves. As a result of them not publishing official lists, I'm less likely to buy any Corsair PSU, as you're never entirely sure. There are lists, but I heard (or imagined?) a month or 2 back that Corsair were moving away from Seasonic (presumably for cost reasons), so how up-to-date are those lists? What if it changes in a few months? As a result I'm unlikely to buy any Corsair PSU - I want to know who makes it without any doubt... that 7-year warranty doesn't cover my hardware and data...

Given that Corsair PSUs are aimed squarely at enthusiasts and not Joe Public, it's the sort of information you should be getting, at worst in product releases, ideally in the product name.

For the record, I've nothing against CWT, but they're no Seasonic or Enermax - in my mind they're solid without being excellent. Just behind FSP in my pecking order. The 3rd tier behind the heavy-weights.

Does Seasonic make this PSU for Corsair, I know they have with various models in the past?

The Corsair equivalents of the Seasonic range have always been cheaper than Seasonic's own brand which makes me think they must be built with inferior components. Seasonic bound to keep the best components for their own PSUs.

I've always bought Seasonic PSUs they seem to be there or there abouts when it comes to awards, I've got them currently in three machines, one has been running 24/7 in my server for 4 years now without a glitch. I believe in sticking with a brand that designs and builds the PSU themselves, albeit Corsair might well have done that in this case.

The Modu82 units were rife with problems when first introduced, not sure if they still are, and Galaxy units were horrifically unreliable considering their epic price tag. I'm no big fan of Enermax PSUs, their quality is very hit and miss, which with PSUs is something you can't afford.
Not knowing the OEM of a PSU is not too big a deal, if it matters, wait until the PSU is reviewed, you'll find out soon enough :P
DFI boards were nuts for power requirements. It is sad to see LanParty bite the dust, but it makes diagnoses a hell of a lot easier!
As of now I think Corsair use the following OEMs:
CX 400 - Seasonic - Noisy design
CX 430 - Seasonic - I'm not sure about this
VX 450 - Seasonic - Quiet design
HX 520 - Seasonic - Quiet design
VX 550 - CWT - Noisy design
HX 620 - Seasonic - Quiet design
TX 650 - Seasonic - Quiet design
TX 750 - CWT - Noisy design
HX 750 - CWT - Noisy design
AX 750 - Corsair - Noisy design
TX 850 - CWT - Noisy design
HX 850 - CWT - Noisy design
AX 850 - Corsair - Noisy design
TX 950 - CWT - Noisy design
HX 1000 - CWT - Noisy design
AX 1200 - Corsair - Noisy design

TAKTAK has the complete rundown including the AX series.

And my VX550 is whisper quiet :)

How much have you loaded it? Every review I've seen has placed the VX550 substantially noisier than all the Seasonic units at the same wattage. Remember some people consider Antec Nine hundreds with fans on high to be quiet, so what people deem 'whisper quiet' is variable :P

Edit: Found the list, I wasn't far off then :P - Nobody seemed to know who the OEMs for the AX series were, I figured it wouldn't be Corsair.

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Originally Posted by sammorris

How much have you loaded it? Every review I've seen has placed the VX550 substantially noisier than all the Seasonic units at the same wattage. Remember some people consider Antec Nine hundreds with fans on high to be quiet, so what people deem 'whisper quiet' is variable :P

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Erm, quieter than my GTX 260 fan set manually too 50% when its been overclocked too around 680Mhz, and a CPU speed of 4GHz(1.44v) during 3Dmark runs.

Obviously, this all depends on your knowing what a GTX 260 sounds like :P

50% on a GTX260 means little to me, what rpm?

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Originally Posted by sammorris

50% on a GTX260 means little to me, what rpm?

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I have no idea sorry :juggle:

The AX series is made by Seasonic and Flextronics.