GPU

I want to buy the AX1600i PSU, but it's out of stock everywhere. Has it been discontinued? I live in the UK.

Indeed, if you buy from an individual. However, buying from a company with a decent reputation trading on eBay is a lot safer and they'll take things back if you're not happy with them.

I'm talking about the clicking noise, which is most certainly a design flaw and that's what I'm referring to about the borked design. And yes, the fan on flimipy's PSU sounds like it's faulty, which is why I made the point that mine does not sound like that.

That's a really awful result. Looks like Corsair really borked this part of the AX1200i design. My one doesn't sound like that though when the fan spins up. I recommend that instead of hacking it and getting into a whole lot of headaches we can't even foresee here, just eBay the thing and get yourself a better PSU without these problems from either Corsair or another brand.

Yeah, it's piss-poor design from Corsair all right. Such a stupid and easily fixable mistake, too. AFAIK, the Link software can define an always-on profile for the fan. Let us know how you get on.

Oh yes, 500+ watts fanless comes in very handy indeed. :): It will be interesting to see if the fan comes on intermittently when my PC is working flat out, but I'm not so sure it will, as per below. During the short time I ran that AX1200i, I did stress test my PC with Furmark for a few minutes at a time and the fan never came on once! It was uncanny watching my PC work so hard, yet sound so whisper quiet and I absolutely loved it! Or I could play a modern, taxing game for a while and hit that audio mute button on the keyboard and experience the quietness with a stopped fan. I've never seen anything like it. It's quite possible that running it like this for an hour on a warmer day would have caused the fan to start, but I think in any normal usage scenario it wouldn't kick in. As an experiment, I'd intended to replace the GTX 780 Ti with my old GTX 590 and use an old GTX 580 for PhysX for a much bigger load on the PSU and see what happened with the fan, but then the clicks started and I removed it pretty soon after that, so I don't know. Looks like you made a good choice with that AX860. 60% fanless is much more than I would have expected and I'm a bit surprised that there's such a difference between the two versions. So, how warm does it get to the touch without that fan spinning?

Yeah, it's annoying all right. Really annoying, to the point I can't use it at all and is now sitting in my cupboard. It's irrelevant whether some people don't care about it due to the other noises in their rigs or their temperament, this PSU is not as described, so the law is on my side on this issue and I will get my money back from Ebuyer. In my opinion, something like this is worthy of a product recall, at least an optional one (non-optional would be something like a fire hazard, say). It might only be a very tiny glitch in technical terms and it still works fine in every other respect, but the consequences are significant, so it's not reasonable to say it shouldn't be fixed because it's only a small glitch. All that matters is that the thing doesn't do what it says on the box and there are many people like me who have quiet PCs in quiet environments where something like this is unacceptable for the reason I described above. Would Corsair care to state on the box that this clicks every 10 seconds in "silent" mode? No, of course they wouldn't, because they know it will put many people off buying it and reduce their profits. They recognized this click as a flaw too, because... From what I understand from this forum, later batches of the AX1200i have this problem fixed in a product revision (try getting hold of one though...) and the AX1500i being much newer already has this fix built in so doesn't have this problem. Yes, it's outrageous getting such an extreme PSU for my rig, but I love putting top end components in it and the performance that comes with them, including very low noise. It's great to know that the fan in the AX1500i is unlikely to ever switch on in my rig no matter what I throw at it because it's so overpowered. :biggrin:

You're wrong there. It's all over that Ebuyer web page about its totally silent operation at low loads. With a very audible click every 10 seconds, it's definitely not silent and there's nothing occasional about it either, is annoying to most people* and clearly violates the Sale of Goods Act here in the UK. I don't know what the consumer law is like in the US, perhaps there's less protection? I don't know. *The noise may be drowned out by other fans in many enthusiast PCs, so the user may never realize the click is there, but in a minimally fanned PC like mine that's built for power and silence and has an open case 24/7 in a quiet room and sits right next to me, it's really audible and completely intolerable for any length of time. It's effectively a form of Chinese water torture, where one ends up waiting for the next bloody click every time. Awful. I must get round to logging that RMA with Ebuyer, lol. Again, thanks for trying to help out. The lack of a solution from Corsair after such a long time implies to me that there's nothing that can be done short of getting a refund on it or having it modded by them to fix the problem and they don't seem to have a program to do that. What a shame, such an excellent product otherwise.

Thanks Lukeroge. I'm going to go for a full refund under the UK Sale of Goods Act and will be buying the AX1500i once I've got it. If that's no good, then it will be the last Corsair PSU I buy in a long time, but I don't think it will come to that.

Any luck with those engineers?

Jonny, it looks like those engineers never got back to you then? I'm going to have log that RMA with Ebuyer in a couple of days then without any help from Corsair. It would have really helped their customers if Corsair would have officially acknowledged this problem and issued a recall or firmware update. I see that instead they've not even documented the problem from the lack of a PCN or got back to you. This is really crap customer service from them frankly and I'm not impressed. It's made significantly worse by the fact that this is a top of the range product from them.

That's a shame, but thankyou very much for trying and letting us know. I'll wait a bit longer for the engineers, but if there's no solution, I'll just get my money back off Ebuyer.

Thanks Jonny.

Hi Jonny, did Corsair get back to you with those lot codes? I looked into it and it turns out that I can indeed use the Sale of Goods Act to force Ebuyer into a refund. This is because within 6 months if the item doesn't meet it's description, it's up to the retailer to prove that it wasn't faulty when I bought it. After 6 months the burden of proof reverses so I need to act quickly. The Ebuyer web page clearly promotes the silent mode as a selling feature, so my clicking unit certainly doesn't meet that description. It's less than 6 months old, so I can use this to my advantage by asking for a PSU with a lot code greater than the minimum one for the fixed versions or a refund if they can't supply it, hence I need those lot codes. If I get a refund, I'll just get an AX1500i which I very much doubt will have this problem. Oh and I'll check it out straight away. ;): Looking at this forum, I'm seeing a lot of complaints for the AX1200i many of which have been posted recently, which makes me wonder if there have been production problems with them?

For reference, my PSU has lot code 1415.