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Corsair HX 620W Power Supply Review

Cases & PSU/Power Supplies by KeithSuppe @ 2006-11-14

Corsair has ventured even further away from their home range landing in the middle of Power Supply territory. Their initial offering´s are well constructed and feature one of the best modular cable systems seen to date. Today we have the opportunity to test their CMPSU-620HX modular PSU.

Under the Hood Continued

HX620 Circuitry

As stated previously the HX620's circuitry belies its power rating, in this case a compliment. Undoubtedly Corsair chose a reputable PSU maker and a solidly engineered design. In the thumbnails below the photo there's a close-up of the inductors, the primary capacitor (heatsink mounted transistor), main transformer and secondary transformers respectively.

Madshrimps (c)

Rotating the PSU to the DC-out lines the motherboard and CPU lines are straight forward with the remainder being modular. Note the use of additional capacitors and inductors which aid in smoothing out high frequency ripple and storage. In the thumbnails we see the "Split Rail" 12V guidelines are met, with a clear separation of the 12V1 and 12V2 solder point’s origination.

Madshrimps (c)

Here we take a closer look at the output stages where they lead to the modular connector slave-PCB. It’s from that board that the modular connector power is distributed. The number of junction/solder points where the wiring is interrupted introduces resistance and is my reasoning behind a preference for uninterrupted wiring. The HX620 doesn't look to be a PSU in which the resistance should affect performance, and it's doubtful this could be measured without sensitive equipment.

Madshrimps (c)

Testing / Conclusion -->

Comment from SuAside @ 2006/11/15

compared to the competition (in the same pricerange), it does have rather small sinks, doesn't it?

Comment from jmke @ 2006/11/16

I've been going through the review again, especially the noise section; from the different readings, a max. difference between idle/load of ~3dBA is hardly a noticeable increase.

thus I've altered the final conclusion, stating that the unit indeed, quiet thanks to the use of a larger 120mm fan.

Comment from Carni4 @ 2006/11/16

I bought this PSU about a month ago together with a Antec P180B and it's great. The corsair fits the antec like a glove.
I don't have the latest hardware, so i don't get it to load fully. I just love the fact that it only blows cold air out

It also come with that cool bag for your modular cables. The bag is great for your toothbrush and stuff when you go to a LAN

Comment from EsaT @ 2006/11/16

Quote:

Originally posted by SuAside
compared to the competition (in the same pricerange), it does have rather small sinks, doesn't it?

Compared to plain aluminum plates in FSP (Fortron) Epsilon 600W/700W (same design also in OCZ GameXstream) heatsinks used by Seasonic are big.
Remember that efficiency is factor determining what amount of cooling capacity (=size of heatsinks and/or amount of airflow) is required.

And despite of three (virtual) 12V rails in sticker there's two of them at most on PCB and there aren't any current limiting devices in those meaning it works as single 12V line PSU.
http://jonnyguru.com/review_details....=32&page_num=2
Markings for two 12V lines on PCB are there because originally Seasonic's aim was design with current limited rails (/or came from design of original S12 serie) but they took notice of possible problems with power hungry components and left current limiting out but so that it could be added to PSU if customer wants.

Same Seasonic's design is used also in PC P&C Silencer 750W. Determining this similarity should be easy to do by comparing innards where only bigger difference is heatsinks optimized for different airflow:
http://www.madshrimps.be/?action=get...&articID=5 10
http://www.madshrimps.be/?action=get...&articID=5 11

As for noise these tests aren't enough for fully determining that, even that second test rig peaks under 400W and that's just where fan speed would start to increase more, at least that Silencer might start getting towards noisy end of scale at higher loads because 80mm fans can't move so much air without lot of RPMs which makes higher pitched more disturbing noise than 12cm fans.

Torture test (emphasis on torture) of same design in Seasonic's own brand PSU can be found here:
http://jonnyguru.com/review_details....=13&page_num=2

Comment from Sidney @ 2006/11/16

I wish I had a load tester.

Comment from jmke @ 2006/11/16

apparently, they are quite costly

his setup http://jonnyguru.com/new_testing/

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