Should you only buy Corsair power supply's?

[Pob255]

Go on DanceswithUnix open it up and have a peek and let us know what's in it, that warranty sticker is taunting you.

@CAT, big issues with capacitors tends to be the secondary not the primary, although a poor primary capacitor often puts higher work load on the secondary capacitors so poor primary will exacerbate issues with poor secondary capacitors.
Same goes for 85c vs 105c rateing on the primary, the primary never tends to get hot enough for it to be an issue but the secondary capacitors are more prone to heat issues, esp as they are often closer to the heat producing MOFETs and/or transistors

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

It seems the TX series know uses Samxon for the secondary capacitors too:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/cms/include/...pect=0&format=

Also,another thing is that some of the capacitors are only rated for higher temperatures for a few thousand hours,so even a 105C rating is misleading.

Quite a minefield. Last PSU I got was a Novatech branded semi modular one. It is doing a grand job, and the website claimed it had all the overvoltage/current etc protection that it should have and as I needed one quickly I just went out and got it.

No idea what the innards are like though.

Please can you take some pictures of the PSU,even some internal ones??

It is suspected,they use some of the OEMs that OCZ have used.

Novatech are very quiet about who they use,despite people asking them.

[watercooled]

Bad caps on primary or secondary can be bad, but they often fail in different ways and for different reasons. E.g. a common failure mode for secondary caps is opening/lowering capacitance, but since they're used after rectification and for filtering, the PSU usually keeps working. This means increased ripple on the output, which in turn can cause instability, or increase load on device filtering, which can cause motherboard VRM caps to fail more quickly for instance.

Another failure mode increasing ESR, which tends to have the same outcome (increases ripple) but can also increase load on the PSU through cap heating, which can lead to catastrophic failure (cap boom). Another way which AFAIK is less common, is caps shorting out - this can also cause a boom but any half-decent PSU should detect the condition and refuse to work, but if there's a bit of resistance in the 'short' and/or if the PSU is happy to output high current, (single rail FTW) it might go unnoticed and, again, boom. Of course, the steel case of a PSU should contain any caps venting/popping.

The primary cap on an APFC power supply is essentially filtering from a boost circuit, just at very high voltage, something like 300v. Provided it's not too high as to prevent correct function of the following stages, slightly high ripple shouldn't impact the output, and slow degradation is likely to go unnoticed longer than the secondary caps whose performance directly affects output quality.

However, the voltage from the primary cap is taken and turned into a square wave by the primary switchers, before being fed through the transformer then secondary rectification, so primary caps shouldn't directly impact secondary cap stress.

Of course, I'm assuming an over-simplistic APFC SMPS, and failing caps can cause some weird problems depending on exact design. I've seen quite a few cheap flyback chargers/adapters simply lose the ability to output their rated spec, and opening up reveals a bulging cap or two.

Edit: Sorry, that was a bit more long-winded than I expected.

[DanceswithUnix]

Please can you take some pictures of the PSU,even some internal ones??

It is suspected,they use some of the OEMs that OCZ have used.

Novatech are very quiet about who they use,despite people asking them.

Not sure I want to do internal shots on something that is about to become a key part of my home network in case I disturb something whilst opening it. Looks quite a nice unit, and at the price I may well buy another one at some point (there is a Novatech branch not that far from work).

If external shots are OK, I might be able to manage that.

[Pob255]

@DanceswithUnix
The only thing that will be screwed onto the top half of the psu casing is the fan, I've opened up enough psu's to see how they are put together
It's only on the smaller form factor psu's where things can be a bit more tricky.
But if you want to keep your warranty I don't blame you

might be able to get a good shot through the fan and back vent from outside if you've got good lighting.

@watercooled,
You put it quite well, yes the primary cap can fail and cause issues, it's just far less likely, most psu's, even cheap ones, over rate the primary switching transistor so a bad primary cap and so nicely put it's at the start of the chain so the rest of the chain filters and cleans up the current before it gets to your components, which has far less impact on the out put except for putting additional load on the whole chain.
The most common effect from a bad primary cap is other killing parts of the psu chain.
Secondary caps being at the end of the chain means they will often dirty up current which is then fed into your components increasing the likely hood of damage there.

The other thing to consider is your household electricity supply, as this is often responsible for dirty current coming in and the primary filtering stage, as this form a barrier against the worst of the dirty current getting to the primary cap in the first place.

On top of this all of the issues and faults caps have are exacerbated by work load and heat, which again is why the secondary caps are more prone to failure and problems than the primary cap.
Even running at 60c a caps performance will be impacted, it's just that an 85c rated cap will be more impacted than a 105c rated cap.

[Biscuit]

Please can you take some pictures of the PSU,even some internal ones??

It is suspected,they use some of the OEMs that OCZ have used.

Novatech are very quiet about who they use,despite people asking them.

A chap from work got one of the novatech own brand ones and was told by the guy in the shop that they are basically the same as the OCZ ones.

[Preacher]

Best psu you can buy is seasonic x series or platinum models. Would take every day over a corsair

[Zerox]

Best psu you can buy is seasonic x series or platinum models. Would take every day over a corsair

What about Corsair PSUs that are made by Seasonic O.o ?

[Preacher]

Then you might as well buy seasonic. Don't think corsair have an equivalent to the x series. I have the x660 and it is completely silent. It has a fan but its never come on!

[watercooled]

That's no more useful than the 'only buy Corsair' myth we've tried to dispel already TBH. Again, they are good PSUs, and in this case one of the best series available, but I don't think it's as simple as designating them as *the best*, it also seems to have been discontinued. There are other excellent PSUs on the market by other OEMs. For example, Corsair's i series PSUs are very high quality and built by Flextronics. Also, price isn't completely irrelevant for most people, and Seasonic's X PSUs are fairly expensive, plus having a Corsair badge printed on it doesn't immediately make it worse somehow.

Try explaining to someone why they should spend far more on something which functions identically as far as they can tell. It makes no difference to performance, and as nice as tight regulation is in charts, computers really aren't all that sensitive to it. Transient response time can be a cause for concern if the PSU takes too long to respond to load, but you'd be hard-pressed to find any half-decent modern PSU which falls out of spec. Similar story for ripple, and provided it's reasonable, it's unlikely to cause problems and again will have no impact on performance.

Build quality and component selection are important factors, one reason being they give you an idea of how long it should last, but reviews can't account for sample variance - although less likely with decent QC, it's possible to get faulty units. Caps get a lot of attention as they're about the only thing likely to wear out during normal use (besides MOVs, if present), and rubbish ones are more likely to wear/fail fairly quickly.

[Pob255]

Then you might as well buy seasonic. Don't think corsair have an equivalent to the x series. I have the x660 and it is completely silent. It has a fan but its never come on!

All of the corsair AX series except for the 1200w are seasonic X platform, for performance and quality the seasonic X and corsair AX are the same, price and rma location are the only differences I base my choice on on these two series
Seasonic has a UK based rma address, corsair is rma address is Holland but they do have agreements with some retailers to handle full length of the rma (scan is one of them AFAIK)

This is part of what originally made corsair psu's so good they where seasonic s12 AND m12 units inside but where a good chunk cheaper at the time.

The corsiar 750w AX is ~£130 the seasonic X 750w is ~£160 so they still cheaper just not by a great deal on this cost bracket of psu.
Currently if you want a good cheap seasonic psu XFX is the one to go for, followed by Antec HCG series

[Mehta23]

I've only ever heard not good things about the CX series and the V1 TX range. Corsair would always be my first choice, but I'd still look around for Antec or XFX PSU's too.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I've only ever heard not good things about the CX series and the V1 TX range. Corsair would always be my first choice, but I'd still look around for Antec or XFX PSU's too.

Most of the reviews of the second generation CX series were done in the US where they were price dumped for yinks. With rebates they would be the equivalent of under £20 in the UK, if you looked at the US price of the equivalent models from competitors.

[danroyle]

I am using cooler master which are made by enhanced electronics. Currently have a 1200w gold psu. My last 3 have been cooler master. I have had xfx and will never use them again.
And personal experience repairing computers I've seen a lot of corsair psus that have blown.

[Preacher]

We say all this but before I upgraded to the seasonic I had a Hiper s type which had lasted me since my Athlon xp2000 without any issues at all!

As long as you go mid range then it does t really matter. I only went x series because its (in normal operation) fanless.

[Dottorrent]

I would go for EVGA's supernova gold series. Made by Etasis and they are known for high build quality. Just don't step down to the 750 model or lower. They're made by FSP and they aren't good at making enthusiast level PSUs.