350-450W Roundup: 11 Cheap PSUs
by Martin Kaffei on July 3, 2012 1:30 PM ESTCorsair CX430 V2 430W
Corsair was using Seasonic units for the majority of their products, but most of their cheaper offerings are now manufactured by CWT. The CX430 V2 is the lowest-end unit from Corsair, which still has enough quality to satisfy the customers. It comes in matt black and has a large Corsair logo on the fan grille. The back is perforated with hexagonal-shaped openings and a small power switch can be found above the power input.
The contents of the package are what you'd expect. You get the required four screws and power cord, naturally, along with some cable ties, a user manual with product data and safety references. Corsair prefers a large single-rail 12V design, rated at 28A (336W). The reason for the high rating of the 12V rail is the high power consumption of CPUs and GPUs.The small rails are rated at 20A each with a combined output of 120W; that's comparatively weak compared to some older PSUs, but since modern PCs usually don't need much from the low voltage rails, this will hardly be a problem.
A 120mm Yate Loon fan cools these units. It has a ball bearing and seven sharp-edged fan blades. A plastic guard blocks part of the intake area to help direct airflow.
| Cables and Connectors | ||
|
Connector type (length) |
Main | 1x 24-pin (45cm) fixed |
| ATX12V/EPS12V | 1x 4+4-pin (50cm) fixed | |
| PCIe | 1x 6/8-pin (50cm) fixed | |
| Peripheral |
3x SATA (ca. 50, 65, 80cm) fixed 3x SATA (ca. 50, 65, 80cm) fixed |
|
| 3x HDD, 1x FDD (ca. 50, 65, 80, 95cm) fixed | ||
The inside reveals a typical CWT design with three heatsinks, two for the primary side and the third for the secondary side. Three of the filtering caps are attached to the other side of the AC jack. The internal layout is pretty typical using a two-transistor forward converter, with a minimal number of components in the transient filtering. The primary cap is made by Samxon--just like the secondary ones. They are a slightly lower end vendor CWT uses for these units.
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Scootiep7 - Thursday, July 5, 2012 - link
What, no Cooler Master GX 450W Bronze? I CALL SHENANIGANS SIRS! A recount must be done.nubie - Friday, July 6, 2012 - link
I still love my PC Power and Cooling Silencer 470, from before they were bought up by (forget right now).Of course at over $100 it really needs to be worth it, but I have seen some on the 'Bay for $30 or so.
Too bad that PC Power didn't have a lower power supply in this test, I would have liked to see how they measure up.
betam4x - Saturday, July 7, 2012 - link
I would even go so far as to say 1 KW power supplies aren't needed for most configurations. Running a Core i7 2600k, 16 GB RAM, 6 Hard Drives/SSDs (2x2TB WD Blacks, 2x1TB WD blacks, 1x1 TB Seagate, and 1xSSD 256 GB Force GT) as well as a radeon 6970. under load i pull 400 watts from a 650 watt PS. A bit more than the review mentions, but most people would swear they need a 1 KW ps for this setup.veri745 - Monday, July 9, 2012 - link
I, for one, would really appreciate some more comparison charts with all of the PSU's stacked up against eachother. You don't need every data point but a summary of at least idle and load, like maybe 50W and 400W, or 20% and 100%, would be much appreciated.Something so I don't have to flip through 9 pages to compare ripple, efficiency, noise, and PFC
Pappnaas - Tuesday, July 10, 2012 - link
Again a review by Mr. Kaffei.And again you didn't give any information about the size of your reviewed psu's.
In my view you did not do your homework. You omitted basic facts by not listing the physical dimensions of your reviewed objects. Anandtech tries to keep up a nearly scientific approach to their other reviews.
Would you omit the measures if reviewing a computer case? A smartphone? A NAS-Box? A car? A TV?
I brought this point up in several comments, alas to no avail.
I think you're shooting yourself in the knee.
Switch to german:
Wenn grundlegende Dinge wie Maße fehlen, wie vertrauenswürdig ist das ganze Werk? Wissenschaftliche Arbeit fängt bei der Beschreibung der Testobjekte an.
Wenn also die Grundlagen wissenschaftlicher Methodik verletzt werden, dann stelle ich fest, dass Anandtech die sich selbst auferlegte "professionelle Arbeitsweise" nicht einhält. Sicher ist das ein wenig Haarspalterei, werden einige sagen. Meine Einstellung: Macht es richtig oder gar nicht. Sonst droht Euer Niveau auf das der PC-Welt zurück zu fallen.
Bambooz - Sunday, May 5, 2013 - link
Dein Niveau (wenn man das noch so nennen kann) ist wohl schon auf unter PC-Welt gerutscht. So richtung Computerbild..zoblace - Tuesday, November 24, 2015 - link
http://www.plugloadsolutions.com/psu_reports/THERM.......on that page they tested Thermaltake Smart 430 and it acheived 80+ Bronze eff. no problem....
after that could we trust online tests at all....