AX860 High pitch noise, coil whining

Hi

As many other's, I also have AX860 with high pitch noise. Actually two. Brand new. I have earlier bought an AX860, which is not making any pitching noise (but some buzzing. That I can live with). But those two brand new with pitching noise is horrible. Both have barcode stickers replaced (new one over the old one). Suspicious.. Can someone at Corsair explain what is going on?

 

And which batch have, and do not have this noise issue? Or aren't Corsair doing anything to fix this? Are we gambling getting a silent one?

 

This noise is mostly caused by loose windings in coils or tranformators (more rare, caps). The problem is most likely caused by using crap components and/or to little (or nothing at all) glue to prevent vibrations.

 

Well, everything is money today. Quality is almost non-existing. Corsair was one of a kind in quality when they first began in this industry. Now I'm more in doubt. I see more and more savings in the products. :evil:

I have been doing some research. And the coil whine seems to be coming from a small coil. (See red ring in the picture). There is also some electric noise from the transformators. But the pitch noise seems to be from the small coil. And if you look into the "same" PSU from Seasonic (see picture below), this coil is damped by a heat shrink. Seasonic uses also more glue, and glue on the transformators. So, why has Corsair dropped this? Well.. $ probably. I'm very dissapointed. I'm not gonna use any more time or money with Corsair psu's. That's for sure. This really sucks. And by the way, the Corsair psu looks very messy inside compared to it's reference ...

 

Corsair:

http://i39.tinypic.com/6zbswm.jpg

 

Seasonic:

http://i42.tinypic.com/6jha3r.jpg

Here is my opinion copied from another post:

 

 

All the AX models, old or new, with the exception on the "i" variants, are made by Seasonic. Do yourself a favor and go do a little digging on Seasonic and coil whining. Even the original Seasonic (non-Corsair rebranded) PSUs have this issue. I have the previous generation HX750 (silver, not gold) and have no issue, but I think it has to do with the fact that the OEM manufacturer is CWT (Channel Well Technologies). The newer gold HXs are now also made by Seasonic. I wanted to buy a new AX because of being fully modular, but have been too sh!t scared to do so because of all these issues. RMA-ing as you have seen, will most likely get you nowhere. Problem is with Seasonic. I am not saying Seasonic PSUs are crap, but there are some underlying issues at hand. The "i" variants are made by Flextronics, but from what I have read, they use Yate Loon fans which a lot of guys report has a high pitch squeal or shrieking noise. The normal AXs use a better San Ace fan on the other hand. What the hell - one OEM has coil whine, and the other has crappy fans - you just can't win either way?! Why could Flextronics not have used a San Ace fan?! Also, I think Corsair should go back to having PSUs made by CWT instead, even Cooler Master's Silent Pro Gold is made by them and as far as I know it too does NOT have coil whine issue like my trusty HX. Another interesting read regarding this topic: http://blog.szynalski.com/2012/11/24...f-a-quiet-psu/

I have an Seasonic 1050W Gold in the house now. No coil whine at all! I can also see that transformators and coils are very well damped with a lot of sealant. And in general much better built than the AX860 crap. So, finally solved for me. By the way, the third AX860 has also started with this pitch noise....

Update:

 

The Seasonic X-1050 makes coil whine with some motherboards, but less than the Corsair AX ones. Have been testing a lot since we have one AX860 left that is whining way too much. It's hard to tell exactly which component(s) that makes the noise without opening it. But it seems more and more likely to be the transformers. So, could the reason be poor quality transformers from the manufactor of these transformers? If so, I really hope you are working to improve this.

 

The last AX860 has been replaced once from the shop. The new one whines as well. I have just recieved yet another AX860 that I have not opened yet. The productnumber (CP-9020044-EU) is the same as on all the earlier AX860. So i'm pretty sure this one is going to whine as well.

 

Ram Guy. Is the AX series fixed for this whine now? And how to tell it's a fixed one?

So this Ram Guy is clearly ignoring the question which most than likely means the issue has not been resolved, this is an extremely poor response. So the company just hand picks one of the probably few psu's that don't have the issue to silence the few who can be bothered complaining about the matter and thats the resolution?

 

I will open up my pc and give you my psu case number if you are willing to send me out a psu that works properly, provided that i am not without a psu for the time this whole process takes place. I should not have to go through sending my psu, waiting a few weeks for your company to determine that it is faulty, and then waiting another few weeks to receive a new one, the whole time being without a working computer.

 

Let me know.

Reading this thread I'm really in doubt if buy an ax860i.

Is this problem solved or it is so frequent as I read on the net?