Shame on you Corsair! (Capxon)

[Behemot]

Re: Shame on you Corsair! (Capxon)

More like he is almost not reviewing at all, that's my point. Otherwise, I know they've been (and still are) way to benevolent at JG in evaluating but this defending of obvious evil by him…man, that's so poor.

Other have PoS? Like that's reason to produce shit myself!

[mariushm]

Re: Shame on you Corsair! (Capxon)

Yes, he got hired a while ago by Corsair.

To his credit, he posted on the forum as soon as he was hired and right away stopped reviewing Corsair power supplies and the Corsair psus are reviewed by Oklahoma Wolf.

[Behemot]

Re: Shame on you Corsair! (Capxon)

So JG works for Corsair? That explains A LOT.

Anyway, Be Quiet! is even worse crap than Corsair. Corsair has SOME good units. I haven't seen single one from BQ! yet. The L7 CM I have reviewed and recapped for customer blew just few days ago with hole in secondary, I'll document it later, stay tuned.

The E9 is basicaly Fortron Aurum with better (and slower) fan but worse c(r)aps for much higher price. It also has 4 +12 V rails…don't know what for.

[goodpsusearch]

Re: Shame on you Corsair! (Capxon)

BS. There is no excuse for using Capxon. If component cost has to be considered they could use Taicon, Teapo or even OST and Ltec.

Capxon makes awful capacitors and the question is not if the are going to fail, but when...

Obviously they can design their psus so that the caps don't fail during the psu warranty. But if they used Nichicon, Panasonic, UCC or Rubycon caps, those could filter ripple without bulging for a decade or more...

Shame on you Corsair!

[mariushm]

Re: Shame on you Corsair! (Capxon)

Here's what Jonnyguru says (he now works for Corsair) :

Since when? Most of their PSUs still use CapXon including the primary which is often 85C rated. Not that I'm one to judge.

CapXon provided excellent data for their caps and CWT provided adequate test results under different thermal conditions. They fail in FSPs after 5 or 6 years in FSP Epsilons? Well.... look at an FSP Epsilon as a whole. The caps have a lot more ripple current to deal with than PSUs today. That's going to shorten the life of the cap just as much as higher operating temperatures.

And I'm certainly not saying Japanese caps aren't better. They certainly are. But they're also more expensive and RM series is not supposed to be an HX replacement. It's supposed to be TX level which is entry to enthusiast level. Component cost has to be a consideration.

The E9 and PowerZone both use CapXon. And I never said all of beQuiet PSUs use CapXon, but to my point..... not all Corsairs use CapXon. beQuiet uses better caps in better units. So does Corsair. For Corsair it's the difference between a 5 year and a 7 year warranty.

And what's wrong with an 85°C Primary Cap?!

Possibly nothing, because primary caps are larger and can dissipate heat better. But remember the roles of a primary vs. secondary cap. Secondary caps filter. The more ripple current they have to filter, the more stress. An AC cap holds up the AC charge. It's constantly charged (unless you have very short brown outs, which is why we have hold up time) and the primary switchers getter hotter than anything else. That why they tend to have the big heatsinks.

And you've never heard of primary failures? So you think that every time a PSU fails, the person opens it up to see why it failed and then posts about it in the forums? Really?? EVERY... SINGLE... FAILURE????

The reason why Corsair has put 105C Japanese capacitors in every single unit is because they had primary cap failures. No, you can Google it all you want and won't find out about them because 99.9999999% of consumers, especially those who build with VS and CX level product, return their product under warranty instead of voiding their warranty, opening the product up and posting about it on forums.

Fortunately for Corsair, they look at what's returned, why it's returned, they do a failure analysis and correct the problem. They haven't felt the need to replace the secondary capacitors in VS and CX EVER because they've never received enough units back with failured secondary capacitors to justify it. And it was this same consideration, along with thermal analysis, analyzing the stress of each cap under different load conditions and different temperatures, that lead to the decision to go ahead and use CapXon, Ltec, Elite, etc.

My 2 cents? Corsair is a brand name. They have higher advertising costs, they have a need for higher profit margins.. distributors put a higher profit margin on Corsair power supplies, stores put a higher profit margin...

If they want to make a "budget" power supply, they have to cut costs as much as possible by going with crap like Capxon so that they'll have everyone between Corsair and the final customer make some money.

But you know what's sad?

The RM 650w Corsair is 120$ at Newegg.

You can get Seasonic power supplies that do 620-650w for as low as 75$... closer to 100$ if you want modular just like that Corsair psu:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817151095
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817151106
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817151118

And these are with quality capacitors and other components...

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: Shame on you Corsair! (Capxon)

The worst part is, it's fanless for the first 250W or so

Looks like a deja vu of the Antec SmartPower series.

[sententia]

Re: Shame on you Corsair! (Capxon)

Just saw this thread. I have to input that i also have a cx430 v2 builder and it has been running for two years now 24/7. It is working on a liteweight pc with just two scsi disks. I didn't bother to check what capacitors it came when i bought it.

Anyway fingers crossed!

[Behemot]

Re: Shame on you Corsair! (Capxon)

Got pics?

[goodpsusearch]

Re: Shame on you Corsair! (Capxon)

Wasn't this series supposed to be ultra high end?

[c_hegge]

Re: Shame on you Corsair! (Capxon)

I hate to dig up an old thread, but Corsair's new RM650 and RM550 use almost entirely CapXon on the output (although the 5vsb has NCC). The worst part is, it's fanless for the first 250W or so

[Behemot]

Re: Shame on you Corsair! (Capxon)

More efficient and more powerful, but definitely not better, arguably worse. They seemed to give more attention to quality back then, those older units (by good OEMs) are built very well and are tanks, and certainly last much longer than today's "beasts" even without a recap and fan swap.

I would not ever dare to say that. Look at things like Enermax Platimax, it even has 5 years warranty which says a lot about the build quality I think. Did any of them old tank PSUs offer that? Compared value of dollar back than and now, and the prices, do you think you don't get several times better value both price and quality wise?

[Wester547]

Re: Shame on you Corsair! (Capxon)

Yeah, great marketing equipping...

I really 'love' those big fat japanese primary cap and than pretty cheap secondary caps. Like Su'scon or, in this case, Capxon or Samxon.

That doesn't make any sense!
From a technical point of view as the load on the primary cap is a joke. It almost never fails (and when it does it's mostly due to too high voltage)...

Well, that's with exception to APFC designs, those do put significantly more stress on the input capacitor(s) so the subpar brands will more likely fail there. But I don't think having Japanese capacitors as part of the voltage doubler is a bad thing even with Taiwanese secondary capacitors - bad enough brands do fail even in the voltage doubler circuit, even if it takes longer than on the secondary as the ripple current and frequency is much less to filter (and input capacitors are clearly used as more bulk/energy storage than ripple/noise suppression).

What's more worrying is the lack of Heatsinks on those CWT made units. I mean those transistors on the secondary side must get really hot or they need a whole lot of airflow...

Well, chunky and big enough heatsinks do take up space so smaller heatsinks do allow for more airflow, especially since more efficiency = less wasted heat and less heat output. I agree that anemic enough heatsinks are rather undesirable, though - I would think, especially on the primary (as far as wattage ability goes), that having a good enough heatsink makes a sizeable difference.

...wich leds me to conclude that the PSUs we have right now are more efficient but not better than those ones you could buy 10 years ago...

More efficient and more powerful, but definitely not better, arguably worse. They seemed to give more attention to quality back then, those older units (by good OEMs, like Delta/Hipro/Lite-on/Astec, not the ones below that in tier) are built very well and are tanks, and certainly last much longer than today's "beasts" even without a recap and fan swap.

[Behemot]

Re: Shame on you Corsair! (Capxon)

Teapo is crap, but as for Samxon, the only series I have seen to eb failing with my own eyes or on pictures is GF. Many people have very good experience with RS, GC and GT on the other hand.

[smason]

Re: Shame on you Corsair! (Capxon)

for example Teapo and Samxon. I am ok with those brands, they rarely fail.

WTF? What planet do you live on?

[Behemot]

Re: Shame on you Corsair! (Capxon)

Yes, when it's more efficient, no need for big heatsinks if you don't need it to run silent. Look at Fortrons But for sure if you try to keep it both quiet and having small sinks, than sure, crap caps gonna get bloated. But they are anyway, sooner or later

As for Samxon, would be wise to explicitely say Samxon GF. Man Yue as a company has a good production, comparable with japaneese caps. Only that Samxon GF is not amongst it (from obvious reasons, hint: Nippon Chemi-Con KZG).

[Stefan Payne]

Re: Shame on you Corsair! (Capxon)

I suggested this power supply to a friend (Corsair Builder Series CX430 V2 430W) after reading reviews online and being aware that it uses non japanese capacitors, for example Teapo and Samxon. I am ok with those brands, they rarely fail. But, as you can see from the photos I took without voiding the warranty, there is at least 1 Capxon inside...

Well, at least it offers a 3 year warranty... Let's see if it will be needed.

Yeah, great marketing equipping...

I really 'love' those big fat japanese primary cap and than pretty cheap secondary caps. Like Su'scon or, in this case, Capxon or Samxon.

That doesn't make any sense!
From a technical point of view as the load on the primary cap is a joke. It almost never fails (and when it does it's mostly due to too high voltage)...

The TX650 V3 also uses junk caps (Samxon GF) http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cas...n_9.html#sect0

What's more worrying is the lack of Heatsinks on those CWT made units. I mean those transistors on the secondary side must get really hot or they need a whole lot of airflow...

...wich leds me to conclude that the PSUs we have right now are more efficient but not better than those ones you could buy 10 years ago...

[Behemot]

Re: Shame on you Corsair! (Capxon)

I thought I might get some FSP designs first, but you made me wanna test this one. I will write our miss in firm who is responsible for getting components to test to obtain me one…

[tom66]

Re: Shame on you Corsair! (Capxon)

Certainly not with 180uF of bulk capacitance!

For a PFC design, it's generally capacitance (in uF) doubled to get output power.

So 360W would be a good rating for it.

[ttn328]

Re: Shame on you Corsair! (Capxon)

Sorry for a bit OT but related to Corsair - VS450, fake wattage ?

Corsair has recently launched the VS450 model in Vietnam. According to their website, they claim that: "Real power. The VS450 delivers a guaranteed 450 Watts of continuous power"
http://www.corsair.com/cn/vs-series-...er-supply.html

Today, on some Vietnamese forums, users have a suspicion that the VS450 can't deliver 450W. None of those have enough equipments to test. The link below is in Vietnamese but pictures say everything:
http://vozforums.com/showthread.php?t=3059996

Primary rectifier: GBU406, main transformer: ERL-35
Any expectation that it could deliver 450W ?

[Wester547]

Re: Shame on you Corsair! (Capxon)

Whoops, I meant to edit my post to say the worst of the worst if you don't count fake polymers (Sacon) is Capxon in terms of known brands, not no excuse for using Capxon if you don't use fake polymers like Sacon... WTF.

I've never had anything from Panasonic fail but that is talking 10+ year old electronics.

But then again, this is the internet, so I expect a percentage of people will use this to wag their finger at us despite having limited or no knowledge whatsoever of the lifespan or performance requirements.

True, but.... it's not hard to discern, at least for me, when something looks to most likely be questionable in quality to say the least, if not downright unacceptable, which is especially the case in PSUs considering they are about the most overlooked and for that matter overrated/underrated component in building a system by most people.