Question How good are Corsair GS series?

[WillC9303]

Hi all, currently building a computer with an i7-4790, 8gb RAM and a GTX Titan X (Maxwell) and just bought a used Corsair GS 600 for £35.

The total power consumption of the whole system should be less than 400w and was wondering whether the GS Corsair series are decent?

I know that Corsair’s lineup is generally quite good with the exception of the nasty VS series, but I’ve never heard much mention of GS?

Thanks in advance, these forums have been quite helpful to me so far.

 

[JohnBonhamsGhost]

Corsair GS

they were intended for lower level desktops, not for gaming or any other types of intensive processing.

 

[DSzymborski]

It wasn't a bad PSU by any means, but a decent budget one when it was new, since the Corsair CXs of that era were of much poorer quality than ones made after 2014.

But you basically overpaid by an order of magnitude here. You shouldn't be buying decade-old PSUs -- this is safety equipment -- and you certainly shouldn't be hooking them up to high-end GPUs. And yes, you no longer get high-end performance from a Titan, but the high-end requirements are the same. Powering old GPUs is like buying a 20-year-old luxury car; you may get that car that was $100,000 for $10,000 today, but it's still going to have the repair and maintenance costs more in line with a $100,000 car. You still have to treat a decade-old Titan the way you did when it was new.

 

[WillC9303]

It wasn't a bad PSU by any means, but a decent budget one when it was new, since the Corsair CXs of that era were of much poorer quality than ones made after 2014.

But you basically overpaid by an order of magnitude here. You shouldn't be buying decade-old PSUs -- this is safety equipment -- and you certainly shouldn't be hooking them up to high-end GPUs. And yes, you no longer get high-end performance from a Titan, but the high-end requirements are the same. Powering old GPUs is like buying a 20-year-old luxury car; you may get that car that was $100,000 for $10,000 today, but it's still going to have the repair and maintenance costs more in line with a $100,000 car. You still have to treat a decade-old Titan the way you did when it was new.

Where I live I couldn't really get much more for the same price. A new 600 watt from a reputable manufacturer is double the price at around £70. The PSU should be fairly understressed considering the computer will really only use 400 watts out of the 600 at 100% utilisation on both CPU and GPU?

 

[DSzymborski]

Where I live I couldn't really get much more for the same price. A new 600 watt from a reputable manufacturer is double the price at around £70. The PSU should be fairly understressed considering the computer will really only use 400 watts out of the 600 at 100% utilisation on both CPU and GPU?

A new PSU of good quality is worth far more than double the price of a 10-year-old (at a minimum) budget PSU of unknown provenance.

In terms of performance, safety, and expected life remaining, 10 quid would arguably be an overpay.

 

[Misgar]

If the Corsair GS 600 PSU is 10 years old or thereabouts, I wouldn't place any trust in the state of the electrolytics, especially if they're low-spec 85C components instead of 105C.

Chances are most of the electrolytics are drying out and some may already have burst and leaked brown goo from the top or the bottom. It's impossible to tell without opening up the PSU.

The only way to be sure is to test each electrolytic in isolation with an ESR meter and that entails unsoldering the capacitors from the pcb. This is not a task for unqualified personnel due to potential high voltages.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESR_meter

I've re-capped a few PSUs and motherboards in my time, but they've all been in old systems of no importance.

If you're not bothered if the GS 600 suddenly dies and kills the mobo/GPU, by all means use a 10-year old PSU.

If the computer is more important, shell out at least 70 quid and get a brand new PSU. It'll be money well spent.