Corsair Cinema

[Krazy K]

If you watch this, do you think that maybe having the cover off disrupted the airflow required to keep everything cool? I don't think that brand X was a shoe in anyway but for the same reason you leave the case door on on your computer you should leave the cover on the PSU. Be that as it may, who has had a PSU die and take most your internals with it?

[Kougar]

Heh, I've seen that before, but the note about the CoolerMaster box in the background is new.

The loss of airflow wouldn't have been enough to cause this. If anything, you should notice they used TWO 80mm fans... most PSUs don't. That PSU had a higher amount of airflow than most units. And cooler air too, because it wasn't sucking in the heated air you get inside a closed PC case.

The video isn't surprising, because that is prefectly normal. You should see [H]'s review of power supplies they bought off the shelf from Best Buy and some other bigbox store... the BB units also blew up because they were not real 400W (or whatever rating they had on the box)... they weren't built to provde more than 200W without bowing voltage regs and were mostly cheaped out on.

I know a friend of of the family that kept buying PowMax units off Newegg because they kept putting them on $15 specials or some silly low amount. He was happy to use them every 4-6 months and buy a new one when it blew up or died on his K7 systems. Third or fourth time one of those units blew up, it cooked his system with it.

I've never had a unit die on me, but I did accidentially short-circuit an Antec unit before... was disconnecting cables troubleshooting something and one of the molex connectors fell just right so the +12 line was touching the ground prong on my CD Burner. I was hurrying and failed to notice... powered it up and got a nice light show. Cracked the main caps on the PSU but it still kinda works, (I use it just to leak test). Amazingly the CD Burner worked fine, although the tray motor never sounded quite the same...

[slugbug]

When my Ultra X-PRO 800w failed it just seemed to fade away. I had noticed the 12v rail dropping to the low 11v range for a few days and then one day the PC just refused to boot. None of my hardware was damaged at all.

I rma'd it and they returned a new X3-800w modular unit. The rma process did take a little long though.

[Rob Williams]

There's no way that those died due to an airflow issue, especially with those two 80mm fans, like Kougar mentioned. I know the guys who did that video and they take things seriously, so I don't think they'd overlook something so simple. What's amazing to me, is that all six died within two minutes of being at 75% load... that's nuts!

Corsair does make some great PSUs though (which is why we have a 1KW of theirs in our main rig), so I guess they have all the reason in the world to point these facts out to people.

As for PSUs that have died, I've killed a few in the past, but that was mostly before I began to take things seriously and "got a clue" so to speak. The worst hardware-related incident I had with a new product was with BFG's 6800 GT PCI-E. This particular card was the third I got back from RMA (yes, these cards were crap), and on the first boot, it sparked up and killed itself and also my monitor. Was not a good day.

[Rory Buszka]

Some time ago, I had an Etasis ET750 power supply (essentially like a PCP&C Silencer 750, feature for feature) in my testing rig, gearing up to test an ASUS M2A-VM motherboard (based on the AMD 690G chipset). However, after about the seventh or eighth time I powered up the system, there was a loud pop and the smell of acrid smoke, and the PSU was toast. I discovered it had taken the motherboard's south bridge with it, as the system would turn on and POST, but refuse to see a hard drive. Etasis replaced the power supply after a while of trying to get in touch, but the review of that motherboard never happened. Sorry, ASUS.

[madstork91]

The only time I've had first hand experience with problems as a result of a PSU blowout was from a second hand experiance (friend blew it out). The only thing needing to be replaced was the PSU.

Dumb butt was bored one day and decided to test what the switch on the back of the PSU was for.

This PSU was so "budget" that I cannot even remember the name, but AFAIK, it would have lasted indefinitely with the rest of the rig.

Video: If you know how to load up a competitors PSU and then can make a vid showing your superiority, do it. If your competitor has released a series of PSU's that cant do what they claim, show people.

You are watching a corsair video about corsair supperiority. Im not detracting from the fact that their competitors PSU sucked. But what did you expect corsairs website to say about their competitor? "Buy them now" ?

Corsair: The argument at the end about 6 brand x's being 3 times as much as a single "budget" psu is also kinda interesting. That kinda means that their 450w PSU is TWICE that of a budget brand. I think "budget" implies that it costs less Corsair. Thats what budget means for these kinds of things.

The corsair PSU being twice as much also means that I can buy a "budget" PSU and if it does flake out, I can still go purchase a slightly more expensive "budget" PSU and still have only slightly paid more than your PSU that is twice as much to begin with. Yes it is a gamble. And if I win, I wont have to pay twice as much.

And I believe the term in a burnout scenario is "Warranty"

[Kougar]

Madstork... as I said my friend tried exactly that, he not only had to buy them regularly they did eventually kill his system. And as far as claiming warranty, I guarantee you will need to pay shipping the dead unit back to the company to do so. You won't see those cheap nonames offering paid for shipping or cross-shipping for their pieces of junk.

Something also not compared is the efficiency of these units... these cheap offbrands are lucky to make 70% as a best case scenario. Any good name PSU will get above 80% now. So 10% of 450W is 45W. Assuming a $0.10 kWh electric rate and 24/7 computer use, that means you spent $3.24 per month extra in wasted electricity. In my view it doesn't matter how you cut it, efficiency savings and not having to pay for RMA shipping, and not having to buy a new unit more than offset the higher initial price.

[Rob Williams]

Originally Posted by Rory Buszka

However, after about the seventh or eighth time I powered up the system, there was a loud pop and the smell of acrid smoke, and the PSU was toast. I discovered it had taken the motherboard's south bridge with it, as the system would turn on and POST, but refuse to see a hard drive. Etasis replaced the power supply after a while of trying to get in touch, but the review of that motherboard never happened. Sorry, ASUS.

That's definitely a unique situation, I think. It's sad for the board, but I guess it's a lot better that the SB be taken than the hard drive. Of course, given HDD prices nowadays, it's hard to say for sure, haha. It does go to show that even quality PSUs can arrive with faults.

Originally Posted by madstork91

You are watching a corsair video about corsair supperiority. Im not detracting from the fact that their competitors PSU sucked. But what did you expect corsairs website to say about their competitor? "Buy them now" ?

If their PSUs are rock-stable, then what's a video going to prove? If it keeps on truckin', it's going to be some boring video. Plus, they leave it to the professionals to do that, and every quality PSU review I've seen of Corsair's PSUs have put them in a favorable light. We have their 1KW in our rig because after doing research, it seemed like a good choice. Our resident PSU guru Matt also backed me up on that decision.

Originally Posted by madstork91

The corsair PSU being twice as much also means that I can buy a "budget" PSU and if it does flake out, I can still go purchase a slightly more expensive "budget" PSU and still have only slightly paid more than your PSU that is twice as much to begin with. Yes it is a gamble. And if I win, I wont have to pay twice as much.

Try using that logic when the cheapo PSU fails and takes your machine with it. Every "cheap" PSU I've used in the past died on me, and I was lucky that none of them killed the PC along with it. It was the last time I had that happen that I clued in to what kind of difference a quality PSU can offer.

I'm a strong believer that the investment is going to pay off in the long-run, especially since we are dealing with expensive components.