PSU tier list 2.0

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They DO fail prematurely VERY often. The CX750 can't even produce 750w so it CANNOT be in tier3. If anything I would but the cx430 in tier 3 and the rest in their 4.

There is no reason to buy a CX because there are always MUCH better units for only a few dollars more or even the same price.
 
Awesome, thank you for the clarification. I wasn't looking into it myself, but more for others (I went with a superflower B2). Many people just click the lowest price and don't look into it any further.
 
The CX units are rated at 30C. That should be indicator #1 of them not being for gaming. JG's review of them showed some awful build quality, with crap soldering, with blobs hanging on wires, degraded wires, pieces of the exterior finish melting onto the board, Taiwanese caps all over the place, an 85C primary cap (funny enough, OklahomaWolf didn't give us a shot of the primary cap on the 750m, I had to get that off HardOCP and HH), the unit shut down at 42c, and was putting out +22c of heat.
 
When some power supplies die, they do not just stop working and shut down. Some of them like to go out in a way that you will never forget.

Let me explain what I have seen with the Corsair CX series. People build a new system. 6 months or a year later they decide to add a video card to the system because the iGPU is not really doing what they had hoped it would do. So they add in the new video card, and according to that the websites say, their Corsair CX should be more than enough power to handle the system plus the video card they just added. Then within days, they start experiencing random errors they have never had before, random power outages, and eventually, they end up with a system that will no longer boot. It does not take long for all of this to take place. They can start having issues they do not understand, and end up with an unbootable system hours later.

I have also seen Corsair CX power supplies with what appears to be failing power supplies in less than a year with a system that had never even drawn 30% load on that power supply. That should never happen. It all goes back to having power supplies built that just have cheap parts in them. Most people will simply replace the power supply and move on. So it does not cost the company much in customer service costs.

After seeing quite a few of these, I asked that the Corsair CX series be lowered to Tier 4 about a month ago now. There was a good discussion on that, and then it was lowered. Since that time, two other series of Corsair power supplies have also been lowered to Tier 4. We are seeing these problems across all of their lower wattage units.

Once you get up into the 850 watt Corsair units, they seem to be decent power supplies from what I have seen so far. But the lower end, I wish they would make them better. I ask people to only buy a Tier 1 or Tier 2 power supply. It costs a little bit more upfront. But those computers just last longer, and have far fewer problems over the years.
 


Silverstone has a very close relationship with Enhance, so none of their SFX units are made by FSP.
 
Thanks MarkW. I didn't think that it would just be lowered out of politics or anything, I figured there was a good reason. I did see one blessing given by hardware secrets that stated that while there were some areas for improvement, that the CX400W was a good unit overall. If there are failures, then I just hadn't found the articles/reviews stating that. I am not the best googler in the world and I am somewhat new to the world of computer components. I'm an engineer and I went to an engineering school (with all of the nerds in tow, of which I was one :ange:), so I understand all of the components and concepts, I just don't have as much hands on experience as a lot of this community.

I was really just looking for a solid point of argument so that when someone asks me "what PSU to choose" I'm not just arbitrarily pointing them to the list and saying "buy these, not these." Though I think that's a perfectly fine thing to do, I'm the type of person that would like to know the "why" not just the "what."
 


Well then, that would be why. I read further up that you stated that it seems it is only their newest units that are failing miserably.
I am convinced, believe me, but to play a little devil's advocate (only for my personal knowledge, not to start a sh** storm) does anyone have links to catastrophic failure? Or even just failure on a large scale of units?
 


Exactly what I was looking for. Any idea what kind of a failure rate they have? 50% 75% 90% I can't believe something with an above 60% failure rate would still be on the market... It could happen, I'd just be very surprised.
 


that's what I was thinking too, doesnt seem to be quite as bad as some of the units listed as tier 4. anyway. it is true that some of them start failing way before their time. my 12v rail started acting up some days ago, but that may have had something to do with a thunderstorm and lightning striking the net 😉

anyway, better safe than sorry I guess. better a tier to low than a tier to high
 
Failure rates on cheap psus are really hard to determine. You gotta figure you spend $30 on a psu and it goes bunk in less than a year, you aren't going to RMA it. It's going in the bin. What the retailer sees is many units sold, and very few returns, so based on that, it's a reliable psu, very low failure rate. Of which reality is slightly different.
If you spend $100 for a psu, better believe it gets RMA if it fails, so quality units have a more accurate count of failure rates.

After 2 yrs, the failure rate of Corsair's CX, CS, VS could be as high as 80%, pretty much 99% by 3 yrs, but for a $30 psu, who's gonna RMA it?
 
Plus you can bet your sweet you know what, that not all their returns get included in their figures so they can pad the numbers further. And I see a lot of refurbished CX units so they've got to be coming from somewhere.

(Insert mass expletives here)...Really? Over a hundred dollars for a refurbished Corsair CX430. In what fricking world does that work out?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA0AJ2SP7323
 


LOL. Move the decimal over a few places to make it .011995 and I might buy it but no promises.
 
Statements like this from places like Guru3D, whom I like in other areas, are the reason why we only trust PSU reviews from a handful of sites.

You know, I think that if you purchase a PSU with a bit of a brand name stamped on top of it, that it probably can't be really bad.
Click to expand...


And that came straight from the first line of a PSU review on their website.
 
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