PSU range and spec queries

[Kalim]

Hello

 

I have a few questions so bear with me...

 

1: In this thread Power Guy talks about clarifying some confusion based around "how many rails" the Corsair 520 and 620 units have.

 

According to reviews and personal testing by myself and many friends, it has been proven that there is no OCP on the unit +12V rails, so therefore there is only actually one rail they are branched off from without current draw restriction.

Multi railed PSU's were created following safety specs by Intel primarily, to have the 240VA limit on any one +12V rail. So is it true that these are really only single rail units?

I would like some details here please. :):

 

2: I am now in need of purchasing around 500 PSU's for medical and health related departments across the world, workstation and office based. Corsair SMPS have served us well in the last few months, with the 520 and 620 versions.

If I total the replacement demand it would be in the range of 1200-1800 SMPS needed overall, ranging from 250W to 1500W power capability. Many are server based, and most have been taken care of elsewhere. However, I have scope for around 380-500 units to choose myself.

 

I would like to know;

- if Corsair has something that I should wait for that can fulfill this power band, especially 650-1000W PSU's

- when at the earliest I can get hold of such a product to test before confirming with the faculties to order

- what any rough specifications would be, even if just the power range (i.e. 800W).

- and if Corsair is planning to release any SMPS at higher power levels than currently doing or has anything in the development stages.

 

I have heard Corsair is panning 750W, 850W and 1000W models and this is why I ask.

Otherwise I am pretty much hard pressed to be ordering right now for products from SeaSonic, SilverStone, Etasis, Zippy Emacs, Antec, PC P&C and so forth to fulfill our requirements. I would only consider waiting till the AMD/ATi R600 release for PSU purchase at the very latest, as its pushed my schedule to the very end anyway with those GPU and CPU releases.

 

Thanks.

[Power Guy]

Hello

 

I have a few questions so bear with me...

 

1: In this thread Power Guy talks about clarifying some confusion based around "how many rails" the Corsair 520 and 620 units have.

 

According to reviews and personal testing by myself and many friends, it has been proven that there is no OCP on the unit +12V rails, so therefore there is only actually one rail they are branched off from without current draw restriction.

Multi railed PSU's were created following safety specs by Intel primarily, to have the 240VA limit on any one +12V rail. So is it true that these are really only single rail units?

I would like some details here please. :):

 

Effectively, yes. The OCP point is not set on the individual physical rails, but instead on the main +12V Source.

 

2: I am now in need of purchasing around 500 PSU's for medical and health related departments across the world, workstation and office based. Corsair SMPS have served us well in the last few months, with the 520 and 620 versions.

If I total the replacement demand it would be in the range of 1200-1800 SMPS needed overall, ranging from 250W to 1500W power capability. Many are server based, and most have been taken care of elsewhere. However, I have scope for around 380-500 units to choose myself.

 

I would like to know;

- if Corsair has something that I should wait for that can fulfill this power band, especially 650-1000W PSU's

- when at the earliest I can get hold of such a product to test before confirming with the faculties to order

- what any rough specifications would be, even if just the power range (i.e. 800W).

- and if Corsair is planning to release any SMPS at higher power levels than currently doing or has anything in the development stages.

 

I have heard Corsair is panning 750W, 850W and 1000W models and this is why I ask.

Otherwise I am pretty much hard pressed to be ordering right now for products from SeaSonic, SilverStone, Etasis, Zippy Emacs, Antec, PC P&C and so forth to fulfill our requirements. I would only consider waiting till the AMD/ATi R600 release for PSU purchase at the very latest, as its pushed my schedule to the very end anyway with those GPU and CPU releases.

 

Thanks.

Corsair is definitely planning on releasing higher-end units as soon as we get something that we can be confident is as good as the HX or better. I understand the difficulty for some customers in waiting too long, but to be honest I'd rather wait a few extra months and have something I think is 100% rock solid than put something out a few months earlier, even if it's at 95%.

[Kalim]

Thanks Power Guy.

 

I can wait but it would need to cover my needs adequately, I mean in power range.

 

So is there anything coming to be at ~700W, ~800W and ~1000W?

 

Or just one of those ranges?

 

Latest I can wait for around 150 units is start of Q3.

[Kalim]

I hope someone replies to my last query inside the next week since its a support forum. :o:

 

My work setup is a system with near MAX load on the-

 

C2Q QX6700 at 3.65GHz.

Corsair XMS2 4GB RAM running at DDR2-1333 (3-4-5-8 1T).

XFX8800 GTX XXX in SLI (655/2100) GPU's.

ATI Stream Processor R580 PCIe 8x card.

PCIe Trenton Backplane BPG 6600.

1x FDD.

I also have a PCIe 8x SATA II RAID and SCSI U320 RAID controller card.

I have 3x 150GB Raptor 10K HDDs in RAID0 and 3x 300GB 15K.5 U320 Cheetah HDDs in RAID5.

Additionally, I have 2x 1.5TB HDDs using FireWire800 and 1x 1TB USB2.0 HDD.

Onboard Realtek: Intel 8 channel HD sound

LG Dual Layer CDRW/DVDRW and LG Blu-ray RE

 

I use a benchtop Intepro Oscilloscope/All-in1 DMM through the USB 2.0.

My Keyboard/Mouse/Phone(s) are through USB 2.0.

I have a Shenzhen MP3/MP4/Charger/5" display unit (etc) through USB 2.0 and a few other devices too.

I have a 45-in-1 3.5" card reader/writer.

Also a 5.25" fan controller, display unit, for volts, temps etc at front.

 

2 printers (Canon Pixma iP9900/Kodak PRO 9810) are also connected through USB 2.0.

 

I have 1x 120mm intake fan and 2x 120mm exhaust.

I have 1x 120mm side intake fan and a 1x 92mm top mount.

 

I have a CoolIT Freezone CPU cooler.

I have the Corsair RAM fans.

I have a custom built Watercooling setup (mostly Swiftech) for my NB/SB/GPU.

 

This is to run 18 hours every day without fail.

 

My questions are:

 

-Are there any crossloading requirements for the Corsair HX620?

-Can the HX620 handle it?

-If not, even in a smaller scenario, will the 50A on the 12V be enough for my PCIe needs (i.e without the extra 3.3V/5V loads)?

-Can I load 50A on the 12V regularly without high ripple, damaging components, bad voltage regulation, low efficiency or heavy decrease in MTBF?

-Are there any complications, negatives and losses to this?

 

 

TIA :):

[RAM GUY]

I don't think you will find a Intel MB that will run at 1333 Mhz on memory and for sure you will not find it with 4 modules and 2T command rate will be needed with more than 2 modules. The spec you have listed should be no problem with our HX620W PSU.

[Kalim]

You know what, because of what you said I went back to check at work through the BIOS this time. Software was reading exactly what I told you as the engineer has set at DDR2-1GHz, but running some troubleshooting showed me after reaching ~DDR2-1100 on RAM, the values have automatically defaulted to 4-5-5-15 2T. :(: Voltage remains the same and yes its an ECS 680i SLI motherboard running DDR2-1333 perfectly, and it has been for some time now.

 

Funny that less than 3/4 of that system wasn't able to be powered by a SeaSonic S12 650E (one I had before upgrading (under load)) so through experience I know it won't be by anything lower. Even 2 PCP&C 1kW leaf blowers died on us during intensive medical apps, after 2-4 weeks. I asked our department Test Engineer and showed him the responses here and you don't want to hear what he said. ;): Lets just say, not a chance. He's the one who tests medical equipment purchased for use, incl. the PSU's through professional industry standard ATE (Heat/PF/Efficiency/Noise/Voltage/Ripple (sometimes Resistance and Capacitance too)), before we install them. And Corsair wouldn't be making anything more powerful if that is what it believed frankly.

 

Thanks for your reply anyway. Since nothing of importance was told as asked, of the time-frame and PSU power range, I'm left with no option but to switch over to Enermax, Etasis, Andyson, Ultra, SevenTeam, SeaSonic and SilverStone units. Many of those just as good but more appropriate power range and amp divisions, MTBF under this stress and more connectors; all mainly due to higher power capacity total available.

[Kalim]

I just wanted to add for people's information and not ruining their system due to some marketing hype, no further query, but to finish the thread off as I found my INITIAL answer confirmed.

 

That's why it took me time.

 

-I now have all the above system I listed, but with a QX6800 at 1333FSB 3660MHz with Digidesign 003 factory FireWire sound card, 4x 150GB Raptor 10K HDDs in RAID0 and 4x 300GB 15K.5 U320 Cheetah HDDs in RAID off PCIe 8x instead, monitor used were a 56inch Chi Mei at highest possible resolution, two touchscreen OLED 22" WQUXGA screens and a NHK projection running; RAM and all else remained the same BTW. A few differences in other devices too, but nothing too special.

 

I used a SeaSonic Power Angel and a Kill-A-Watt interchangeably to measure power consumption myself this time. To check, our lab. engineer used his a Chroma 8000 load tester, which he uses for all national corporation system checking every year when he comes round. This one: http://www.chromausa.com/apsts2.htm

 

I KNEW it was higher than a 600W could hack and beyond my comfort range. :(:

 

I used 2 PSU's to cross-check since I already have the availability. I used an Enermax Galaxy DXX 1kW and a Thermaltake Toughpower 1.2kW.

 

BOTH of them were registering 84-87% efficiency at max loads in our testing.

 

Let me preface this to any uneducated or doubting minds.. there is nothing whatsoever different or wrong with my system or power supply. This testing was done in a hospital, where I work, alongside a professional, highly certified and 30 year experienced laboratory test electrical engineer supervising. I had an old friend who has worked at AMD since 1972 over here to guide me too.

 

HINT: The engineer had told me for 3 months now that the system will draw 1kW easily at peak! AMD peer ALSO said it'll pull above 1000W beforehand.

 

 

Guess what numbers my system was pulling?

 

*I put everything together, loaded up my system over 2 days of testing to use the printers, card reader, MP3 player, Camera device, FireWire attachments, USB2 attachmnets, IDE attachments, RAID0 and RAID5 testing, PCIe/PCI attachments, sound attachments etc and also ran ran 3DMark '06, games like Prey, FEAR, STALKER, another sample one yet unreleased but heavy on DX10 use, software that is only available for medic or professional use such as PRO Symbiotic, Houdini and some Physics calculations (Lagrangian math to be specific), running alongside the above was, computational geometric analysis of AEU topography (etc), while looping Orthos and a Blu-Ray HD sample recording playing at the same time.

 

The MAX we registered during testing was 1567W (VAC)!!

 

That's right, you are seeing entirely correct figures. Which means my system draw was exceeding the Enermax max. range by far, hence why I needed a Thermaltake Toughpower 1200W. Yet, none of them shut down at all so no OCP/OVP, although they were both getting very noisy and warming up heavily! As a figure of indication, the exhaust gases from the Enermax were 76C when we measured a 1352W load being pulled from the socket.

 

84% efficiency translates the maximum wattage my system needed at 1316.28W (VDC)

 

So now you know why Tagan, Thermaltake, Enermax, SeaSonic and Corsair, Ultra, Antec and SilverStone (etc) are making PLUS 700W SMPS. The enthusiast system's are indeed pulling 300-1000W peak load.

 

Hope it helps to melt the FUD. Thanks. :):