Corsair RM1000 Power Supply Review
by E. Fylladitakis on April 24, 2014 6:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- Corsair
- PSUs
- RM Series
External Appearance
Corsair painted the chassis of the RM1000 a matte black color, as the company usually does with their PSUs. Aesthetic improvements include chamfered edges and decorative stickers on the sides of the power supply, as well as parallel, embossed ridges aligned with the fan's finger guard design. Note that the chassis of the Corsair RM1000 is 180mm long, which is significantly longer than typical ATX PSUs. This could be a problem if the PSU is to be installed inside a small or low-cost case, but that seems unlikely considering the class and power output of the unit. Regardless, you'll want to make sure your case is able to accommodate such a large PSU.
Corsair placed the sticker with the specifications of the PSU on the top of the chassis as the front of the chassis is littered with the connectors for the modular cables and the sides of the Corsair and RM1000 logos. The CPU and PCI-E cables share the same style connectors, the split 10-14 pin connector is for the ATX cable and the smaller connectors are for SATA/Molex cables. There is also a small connector for the Corsair Link interface. We should note that the RM1000 sports the "Basic" Corsair Link interface, which allows you to monitor some basic figures (e.g. fan speed and the 12V line amperage), but it is far less interesting than the complete monitoring capabilities of their top-tier digital models.
Internal Design
The 135mm fan responsible for the cooling of the RM1000 is a Corsair NR135L fan. As even the UL certification number points back to Corsair, this technically is Corsair's own unique product and not a re-branded fan, though some Chinese factory still makes it for them. It has a rifle bearing and a maximum speed of about 1600 RPM. At this point we should note that the RM1000 features a "zero-RPM fan mode", meaning that the fan will not start until the load reaches a significant load (about 40%).
As we noted in the introduction, the OEM behind the RM1000 is Channel Well Technologies (CWT). The first thing that you'll notice about the design is not some special feature or fancy component but the heatsinks, which are preposterously small for a 1000W unit that is designed for low-noise operation and features a fanless mode. In fact, the heatsinks not only are small but also are nothing more than simple quadrangular metallic slabs, with minimal heat dissipation surface. Apparently, Corsair has placed a lot of faith on CWT's design and efficiency, especially considering the five year warranty they provide.
The 400V / 390 μF APFC capacitors are high quality parts supplied by Nippon Chemi-Con. The rest of the electrolytic capacitors are supplied by TAICON and CapXon, Taiwanese companies, with the exception of a stray small Nippon Chemi-Con on the connector's PCB. Although TAICON is not very well known, it is an old company and the quality of their products is considered to be on par with their (similarly priced) Japanese counterparts. CapXon is a very well known company and makes above-average quality products, but they've also had a couple of failed series in the past that rightfully reduced the reputation of the company amongst enthusiasts.
The build quality of the RM1000 is excellent overall. The soldering job is very good, with zero bad joints or burnings, only a few spots where the assembler was too generous with the solder. For mechanical cohesion, the manufacturer used a lot of glue to secure most components. An extra application of lacquer and glue can be seen on the inductors, most likely to minimize the chance of vibration-generated noise (also known as "coil whine").
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ssj3gohan - Monday, April 28, 2014 - link
Can I give some constructive criticism?The review is missing some parts that would be very useful:
- The teardown is extremely short and basically useless. All the information we get from it is that it's made by CWT. There is a lot more to see that is relevant, like the topology (it's obviously LLC resonant, otherwise the heatsinks for the active devices could never be that small even for a lower powered unit. They dissipate so little because they are switched at zero voltage and current all the time (ZVCS) instead of only half of the time (pseudoresonant) or never (traditional push-pull). Switching losses are the biggest issue in high current PSUs. Another important thing to note is the make of the controller chip(s), as this usually gives a good idea of the modern-ness of the design (LLC resonant has been around for 20 years, but only recently have they really started to do propagation time compensation and such awesomeness). It's also important to note that for instance on this unit, the non-important cap (input filter cap) is from a good brand and the caps that actually matter (high ripple current, high stress in general) are B or C grade. CapXon is not something I would trust handling a couple tens of amps of ripple current for 5 years. Lots of reviewers get fooled by the big shiny cap on the input having the good markings, but this misses the point of cap quality inspection. There's more that should be in the teardown, but for that I'd just recommend aping Jonnyguru, X-bit labs or such people.
- On the hot *and* cold tests (as well as crossload), at least include a table of the actually used loads and results in numbers, as well as your total (un)calibrated error - depending on whether all your instruments are calibrated or not.
- Don't fucking interpolate to get nice graphs! This is a deathly sin in data processing. It causes all kinds of crazy things, like implying that the slope of the efficiency graphs is a certain value at the edges (while it probably is something completely else) and causing the weird ripples in the efficiency curve you see. I'd bet money that that ripply stuff is just measurement error. In fact, the entire graphs are a big departure from both the 80 Plus test report and other review sites, so even if this is not actually an error on your part, we need to be able to properly compare this (with table values) to be sure. Even just the sentence 'this PSU was tested on 230VAC input while most other sites test at 115VAC input; this may inflate efficiency numbers' would greatly improve the review.
- This leads to the next point: interpret the data for us, give us a well-researched explanation for weirdness. Why do the SPL numbers look the way they look? Did you have a tachometer? Did the sound have a broad spectrum or was it whiny?
- Also: another case of interpolation causing weird graphs is the heatsink temperature graph. Cut that graph in the middle, and annotate it on the left with 'fan off' and on the right with 'fan on'. Don't try to connect the two separate domains, it is meaningless and just causes weird bumps in the graph that are not there!
- In the conclusion, don't just give a conclusion on this unit in a vacuum. You're a review site! You are supposed to know the market, know the competition. Tell us how the unit performs compared to the competition and how well it is priced. THEN give us a recommendation. Take into account the industry standing of the brand and previous PSUs. As it stands, the conclusion is not satisfactory.
I'm not trying to be harsh, but Anandtech has a good reputation and there are too few good PSU reviewers around on the internet. You're one of only 3 semi-fulltime PSU reviewers with a master's and/or PhD in the right area, so I have high hopes for the future. I already had high hopes when you were introduced for the first time, but the reviews so far have been passable instead of great. This needs to be fixed.
Michal Daniel - Wednesday, April 30, 2014 - link
Makes for a splendid hackintosh. Typing this on it.http://www.proofsheet.com/macbeast/all.html
amazingrugs - Friday, May 9, 2014 - link
I've been out of the building game for quite a while. I think the last system I built had a Radeon 9500, when AGP was all the rage! What kind of system does it take to push a PSU like this?alostpacket - Thursday, May 15, 2014 - link
You guys should never post after-rebate prices, you are doing their marketing for them.burningisis - Monday, November 16, 2015 - link
I think another use for a high wattage PSU like this other than mining or those using autocad... future proofing a machine. I know I've replaced enough PSUs on my machines as I upgrade GPUs or upgrade the number of drives I use or if I decide to push overclocking. I know some users are going smaller but there are users still out there demanding larger PSUs, running 3+ GPUs, running multiple processors on an enthusiast system. It may be a small subset of users, but there is a demand out there for these, and this looks like a very nice PSU to future proof a build as well