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Thread: Should you only buy Corsair power supply's?

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    Should you only buy Corsair power supply's?

    It doesn't seem to matter where you look on the internet - everyone is saying buy a Corsair Power supply.

    Now i understand that you get what you pay for, and i wouldn't trust a £1500 rig to a 750w power supply that cost just£14.99. But what about if you're building a value gaming rig? Nobody realistically is going to purchase a £95 Corsair PSU when the rest of the PC components came to less than £200! So what is the alternative?

    Sure, there is ANTEC, but still - a premium item.

    I personally would avoid OCZ for no other reason than how frequently their SSD's fail - makes you question their quality control as a company. But what about Cooler Master or Thermaltake?

    It would be great to hear from people who use PSUs that are not the brand leaders (Corsair/Antec) and are happy with their purchase. And from those who where pleasantly surprised by a budget PSU.

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    Moosing about! CAT-THE-FIFTH's Avatar
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    Re: Should you only buy Corsair power supply's?

    You need to be more worried about the OEM who makes the PSU and the OEM range used. For example some of the OCZ ZS series are quite good PSUs,whereas some of the Corsair CX series are not necessarily a cut above the competition.

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    Re: Should you only buy Corsair power supply's?

    The alternative is a £35 Corsair PSU
    Or any number of other quality makes, a PC that costs £200 isn't going to need 750W.
    Or you could just say, it's only a cheap PC, I'll take the risk.

    I have a lovely PSU from OCZ, although I think it was originally made by FSP, so no worries there

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    Re: Should you only buy Corsair power supply's?

    This is a really useful database which lists just about all the major brands of PSUs, together with info about the OEM and links to web reviews for specific models. I always check it before deciding which model to buy...

    http://www.realhardtechx.com/index_archivos/Page541.htm

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    Re: Should you only buy Corsair power supply's?

    Have a look at the thread directly below this one in the PSU forum.

    I keep hearing this nonsense about people recommending 'only Corsair' for power supplies - Corsair are not an OEM, their PSUs are made by other companies including CWT, Seasonic and Flextronics. Some of Corsair's PSUs are very good, some are very mediocre and while they're miles better than a '700w, £10' nuke, they're not immediately better than all competition just because of the brand name.

    There are plenty of good brands and OEMs.

    Never take the risk with no-name PSUs though, while you might not care if it fries your PC, they also tend to lie about safety features and are often dangerous e.g. shock and fire hazard.

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    Re: Should you only buy Corsair power supply's?

    I refer to that list a lot when looking at psu's
    Back when corsair first came onto the psu market almost everyone was suggesting them because they where very good psu's at a good price, since then most of the other brands have greatly stepped up their game and there are now a lot of other good psu's for good prices on the market.

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    Re: Should you only buy Corsair power supply's?

    I bought a Corsair CX430 PSU because 1) it was cheap, 2) Corsair is (supposedly) a reputable brand. It failed in a few weeks.

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    Re: Should you only buy Corsair power supply's?

    Now most people would recommend Corsair because of their status as a PSU manufacture but there are better value ones than just Corsair. For example, XFX use Seasonic OEM boards on all of their products and they are very well priced, as well as Cooler Master with their Silent Pro series. They are very good power supplies for the money. It not to just buy Corsair, it just on who recommends the power supply and for what reason.
    "Nothing is safer than a giant snowball whipping through space...at a million miles an hour"

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    Bagnaj97
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    Re: Should you only buy Corsair power supply's?

    Quote Originally Posted by sha-1 View Post
    I bought a Corsair CX430 PSU because 1) it was cheap, 2) Corsair is (supposedly) a reputable brand. It failed in a few weeks.
    But it didn't electrocute you, burn down your house, fry your other components and shoot your pets. All companies have the odd faulty product.

    There are 3 reasons people recommend good PSUs. Firstly they tend to be more reliable (but aren't always, as you've seen), secondly they provide the power they're advertised to and finally when they do fail, they have safety features built in to ensure they fail gracefully.

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    Re: Should you only buy Corsair power supply's?

    Quote Originally Posted by watercooled View Post
    Have a look at the thread directly below this one in the PSU forum.

    I keep hearing this nonsense about people recommending 'only Corsair' for power supplies - Corsair are not an OEM, their PSUs are made by other companies including CWT, Seasonic and Flextronics. Some of Corsair's PSUs are very good, some are very mediocre and while they're miles better than a '700w, £10' nuke, they're not immediately better than all competition just because of the brand name.

    There are plenty of good brands and OEMs.

    Never take the risk with no-name PSUs though, while you might not care if it fries your PC, they also tend to lie about safety features and are often dangerous e.g. shock and fire hazard.
    That pretty much sums up my view. I certainly wouldn't exclude Corsair and would research their offerings when buying, but as it happens, have yet to buy one. Enermax more than once, Seasonic a couple of times, others including Delta from time to time, but never yet Corsair. They just haven't been the best deal when I was buying. There was a time when they probably were, but in my opinion, they've traded on that and jacked prices to the point where, value for money, they just aren't the deal they were at one point.

    So my advice would be to look into several brand names, research what you're getting and, yes, include Corsair, but the "only Corsair" attitude strikes me as one of ignorance.

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    Re: Should you only buy Corsair power supply's?

    I have almost only Corsair PSU's in various computers, but only becuase their £30 430watt PSU is cheap and seems decent. I was impressed by a coolermaster PSU that I ended up with by mistake (its a long story). Its a 500watt unit and until recently was running my overclocked i7 and a GTX570, I now have a fancy Corsair supply that lets me see how much power the PC uses; While playing games it uses just about 500 watts, so the coolermaster worked for several years with kids playing games all hours running at nearly 100% capacity.

    (I did used to recommend only Corsair PSU's, but only becuase they came in little velvet drawstring bags. )

    To answer the OP question, no, there are plenty of other manufactures that make / sell decent PSUs. JonnyGURU and Hardware Secrets websites have lots of PSU reviews and they actually load test the unit. One of them (sorry, can't remember which one) tested a cheap no name PSU, you should read the review, but long story short is that it let out its magic smoke at less than half its sticker rating.

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    Re: Should you only buy Corsair power supply's?

    Warranty too. Shipment to Holland for RMA iirc.....

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    Re: Should you only buy Corsair power supply's?

    Yes, its Holland....
    Personally I'd say away from Corsair PSU atm, they have problems that you wouldn't expected from a PSU ?

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    Re: Should you only buy Corsair power supply's?

    Quote Originally Posted by Bagnaj97 View Post
    But it didn't electrocute you, burn down your house, fry your other components and shoot your pets. All companies have the odd faulty product.

    There are 3 reasons people recommend good PSUs. Firstly they tend to be more reliable (but aren't always, as you've seen), secondly they provide the power they're advertised to and finally when they do fail, they have safety features built in to ensure they fail gracefully.
    The problem is the competition has stepped up and Corsair has not. Why should I care for the CX430W when I can get better PSUs for around the same price??

    If you want to trust Jun Fu and Fuhjyyu capacitors,then fine. Those were the very same capacitors which caused problems with Antecs years ago(and they ended up improving their quality after that incident). Even those infamous Hiper PSUs were down to the capacitors used IIRC.

    Samxon GF and Caphxon are average too,but at least if they are not pushed too much and cooled well,they might be OK. The CX430W V1 and V2 had the chance of a Samxon GF series primary capacitor,and this line had some issues. There also seems to be more complaints about the newer CX series too.

    The CX series has gone through THREE revisions since late 2010.
    Last edited by CAT-THE-FIFTH; 12-02-2013 at 06:01 AM.

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    Re: Should you only buy Corsair power supply's?

    IMO, you should ALWAYS look at the model and not the brand itself. Nowadays, companies outsource a lot of their production and also get parts from all over the world. Whilst the "premium" models of a brand itself may indeed be the best in the industry, this might not be the same for their "budget" models.

    This applies to most products in the technology world. E.g. The CX430W is subpar here in the UK because you can get a "better" PSU for the money (value for money) whereas the CX400W was very good at its time, both products from Corsair priced fairly similarly in the UK.

    The basic rule of thumb is always to check reviews for the models you're interested in - not the easiest to find though as "budget" products usually get less attention.

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    Re: Should you only buy Corsair power supply's?

    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.

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