I have been reluctant to write a review on this product because I know from experience how difficult it is to install and how temperamental these sort of devices are. PSUs are getting better, they have come a long way in the last 10 years. Corsair and other manufacturers should include a more practical installation guide, but this differs depending on your setup. For example i notice a lot of people who need lower power requirements i.e. 450W and below are completely fine with the device....but people at 650W+ are not so impressed. I hope the below steps helps explain why this is important.
1. Calculate your normal power requirement from the manufacturers website of each of your devices, including fans, the whole lot. (CPU, CPU fan, GFX card, Motherboard, SSD, HDD, DVD Drive (or more), 4 fans (or whatever).
2. Calculator the max power each of those devices can pull, this accommodates for overclocking/turbos.
3. Look up the efficiency of your new PSU. This 750W corsair for example has max eff at 100% load of 89%, and 91% at idle at 230V supply. So your pretty certain you will get 675W no problem. Anything over that will start to cause wear and tear on your PSU and potentially blow it up. As you are asking it to pull more power than it can do safely.
4. If your PSU has sparked at the back, it is 3 possibilities, faulty kettle cable (surprising but yes!), main breaker was faulty (unlikely in well tested brands) or your PSU doesn't have enough juice for your system and kapow!. Extremely important to know it's efficiency. It is impossible to be 100% efficient incase your wondering. As a Physicist, you understand energy loss, heat loss, noise loss, material defects reduce efficiency (we are talking quantum scale here on materials, nothing our factories can do about it!), etc. nothing is perfect in the real world, no matter how "perfect" it appears.
5. Make sure you have a motherboard, CPU, GFX card with some sort of surge protection...otherwise why buy a potentially lethal item!? Most motherboards/CPUs/GFX cards at the high end have these built in. So if your PSU blows up, it won't affect your other components. Also, high end PSUs like corsairs here are designed to blow up themselves up first rather than your other components.
6. Make sure you got the right cables. I had to connect my CPU to a molex connector before...of course my PC was smart enough to realise it could not overclock through this connection, therefore it was disabled. Most BIOS will do this. Also extremely important if your PSU doesn't do what it says on the tin. For example I had a 750W power supply made by another manufacturer, but it's max efficiency was 75%, so 560W. This would be catastrophic for a 600W system.
7. Motherboards and PSUs are the most annoying to install. You mess with so many connections! So, make sure that everything is snug and tight both power connectors in your PC and also motherboard connectors to your other devices, as you can easily dislodge them. An example, I recently could not turn on my PC after putting a new PSU in. Green light was on the motherboard, but no power wanted to come through. This was the PSU telling me that either my power button was not connected and therefore it could not get a signal or my CPU wasn't connected properly or my motherboard wasn't connected properly. To my surprise it was the CPU...however it was connected fine. The problem was caused by an adapter 8 pin to 4pin (As the PSU is 8 and my CPU was 4). It worked fine before...and get this...by changing one of the 4 pins around to connect the CPU was the problem. This demonstrates that either it is a faulty cable or one of the 4 pins has priority power, I think it is the latter.
8. There are so many ins and outs about PSUs. Installing these are very hazardous and are not for the impatient and uninformed. You must have all your data and specs ready before considering getting a new PSU.
9. Never give up! If you do the right research and have the right tools, everything is repairable! :)
10. My Corsair 750W is working great, system feels good/quiet (oh yes if you PSU is loud it's working too hard and you must have miscalculated something!).
11. Best of luck!
| Brand | Corsair |
|---|---|
| Product Dimensions | 1.5 x 16 x 8.6 cm; 2.47 Kilograms |
| Item model number | CP-9020086-UK |
| Manufacturer | Corsair |
| Series | CS850M |
| Colour | Black |
| Form Factor | ATX |
| Wattage | 850 watts |
| Are Batteries Included | No |
| Item Weight | 2.48 kg |
