Corsair HX620 620w Power Supply @ [H]

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FrgMstr

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Corsair HX620 620w Power Supply - What happens when you put Corsair’s 620w power supply in an oven as hot as your computer case and then see how it works? If you are looking for a new PSU, put Corsair's on your short list.

Beyond all of the performance metrics it set under our standard testing the HX620W also performed capably when the unit was subjected to a full load test at 45c for 3 hours. This test is not part of the usually testing criteria and only came about out of sheer morbid curiosity of whether or not we could “kill” the unit.
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Ah, I was wondering why this was locked.

Thanks for putting the tables inline; it makes the article much clearer. One more thing I'd suggest, though; write "20+4" instead of "20(4)". It might be more clear what is meant then. Also, since this power supply acts as a single-rail design, perhaps the 12v2-4 fields could be eliminated on page 4-6?

Typo fixed. Lots of formatting changes this time for sure. We wanted to focus on content our first time out. Yes, we can fix that on the charts, it would be best to ditch the () and go to a + sign. - On the 12v2-4, I think it is sort of important information that some people want to know that it is not omitted by accident if they are just viewing the charts. We want them to stand on their own without the text as good as possible. - Kyle

A quality review, overall. I'm glad to see there exist power supplies that will pass the testing regimen.
 
The Beast returns from Hell crowned a king! Excellent review as always guys. Nice to see my money was well spent on the HX620W.
 
SPCR has been advocating Seasonic PSUs for years now. Welcome to the club, boys!
 
This makes me all the more happy with my HX520. Solid product and you can't beat Corsair support.
 
It's a very comforting review for Seasonic and Corsair owners like me. I now know that mine would perform as rated for a while :) A bit expensive but well worth the price for a robust unit.
 
Nice review, [H]. I grabbed my HX620 about a month ago after seeing a Corsair rep making the rounds here in the [H] Power Supply forums and attending to some customer needs. It was just little stuff, too, but he was taking the time to take care of it. That impressed me enough to look at their product at exactly the right time: my old PSU went up in smoke and took my old computer with it. Needless to say, my new PSU purchase was going to be a carefully considered decision. Now, my new computer is up and running with an HX620 quietly doing its job. I have no doubt after reading your review, JonnyGuru's review and other posts here that this will remain one of the superior PSU options for a good while. I certainly recommend it to anyone who asks.
 
"comforting review...I now know..."

Not meaning to sleight [H] in the least, but JG did reviews of both Corsair units a while back now, and came up with the same conclusions..And his testing methods are (pretty much) the same as what [H] has decided to employ are they not?

Anyway, nice review. I would have liked to see how much it could actually put out before cutting out (just for sh*ts and giggles)..I'd be willing to bet well over it's rated 620w, although efficiency would almost certainly drop, and then there's that pesky fire hazard when overloading. The reason I mention this: the previous review candidate being a 1000w @ 25c, when in actuality it's more like a ~800-850w unit when tested in more realistic temp zones (35-45c)?

On a side note - a question for the Corsair reps lurking.. Barring any NDA silence, is there any intention on their part to bring out larger PSUs, ie: the 700-1000w range in the (near) future? I don't mean to reward the lazy tech manufacturers (seems like it's efficiency be damned performance for most right now), but with things like R600 around the corner, quad core CPUs (esp the Barcelona[?] based replacement to 4x4/QF) becoming more popular in the near future, larger storage arrays...I'd be willing to bet even a rock like Corsair will need the capacity - seeing that 500-600w is pretty much standard these days.

[edit] @ Paul below. Yes, I read that. I just meant Jonny and [H] reviews (being really punishing & much more thorough) in relation to the vast majority of reviews on the net whose "reviews" consist of (at best) sticking an average system and probing the molex outputs w/ a DMM, and often relying on the Windoze based sensor readers alone. The two of you seem to be among maybe the handful at best whose reviews can truly be relied upon to give a clear picture of whether someone's ~$100-200+ purchase is worthwhile.

And below him, yes Seasonic should bear the brunt of the praise for actually building the units for Corsair. However, like has been said before, they DID pick Corsair... And did label truthfully (well to be fair let's say realistically), unlike another 'un-named company' [that's a hard one :p] with their Topower based unit. And on the 80+ idea, the list of Seasonic units who are qualified - http://80plus.org/manu/psu/seasonic.htm.
 
I wouldn't give much of any credit to Corsair as I would to Seasonic's group. Corsair did right by picking the correct company to OEM/Rebadge from.
I have been a long time Seasonic fan and have proudly used their PSU's for years in my Servers and PC's.
You forgot to mention that nearly 100% of their PC PSU lineup meet the 80Plus spec. Also all their PSU's currently meet green specs.
Lower wattage PSU's and can be installed in PC's and have the ability to meet Energy Star requirements for PC's.

Sure there are tons of other PSU manufactures out their that could do this. Seasonic has been consistent, reliable and willing to help our environment before all and therefore in my mind is the best out there.
 
First, thanks for the good review, Paul. Your methods are very thorough and Corsair has never shied away from standing behind our products. I look forward to reading more of your reviews about some of our competition's power supplies. ;)

kush said:
On a side note - a question for the Corsair reps lurking.. Barring any NDA silence, is there any intention on their part to bring out larger PSUs, ie: the 700-1000w range in the (near) future?

And below him, yes Seasonic should bear the brunt of the praise for actually building the units for Corsair. However, like has been said before, they DID pick Corsair... And did label truthfully (well to be fair let's say realistically), unlike another 'un-named company' [that's a hard one :p] with their Topower based unit. And on the 80+ idea, the list of Seasonic units who are qualified - http://80plus.org/manu/psu/seasonic.htm.
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First, we do have products in development and we are shopping vendors to find somebody who can make exactly what we want with the performance, reliability, and quality demands we have. I've said this before, but if we just wanted to buy a product from somebody and slap our logo on it, we'd have been on shelves last year with a 1KW. It just wouldn't have been a very good 1KW.

Who our vendor is does have a significant impact on the quality of our products, but keep in mind that we have very special requirements for the products we sell. Namely that we use all high-quality capacitors, that all internal components be rated to 105C minimum, that the fan we use has a high MTBF so we don't have a lot of failures of the only moving part, etc. So while we are very happy with our current PSU and its manufacturer, our engineering group is designing parts of our next-gen units so that it will not only support the highest-performance parts on the market when it is launched, but the highest performance parts on the market well after it is launched, as well. I think you have to give credit to both the manufacturer and us when it comes to this PSU, because a large part of the product itself was designed by Corsair specifications and requirements, and it's significantly different from the manufacturer's other offerings.

Anyway, man, I typed a lot there.
 
Congrats to Corsair and Redbeard on a fine product. If I felt like I could go with a PSU under
1KW, I would most definitely get this PSU from Corsair. I will be purchasing the Enermax Galaxy
1KW DXX PSU soon this month, but if it gives me any trouble in the future I will keep my eyes
open for Corsair's next PSU offering.
 
mentok1982 said:
Congrats to Corsair and Redbeard on a fine product. If I felt like I could go with a PSU under
1KW, I would most definitely get this PSU from Corsair. I will be purchasing the Enermax Galaxy
1KW DXX PSU soon this month, but if it gives me any trouble in the future I will keep my eyes
open for Corsair's next PSU offering.
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Stay tuned ;)
 
solotech said:
I wouldn't give much of any credit to Corsair as I would to Seasonic's group.
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Next time you get credited with making a good decision, remember that you deserve none of the kudos.
 
solotech said:
I wouldn't give much of any credit to Corsair as I would to Seasonic's group.
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Apart from picking out the right company and then providing the excellent service on top of that? Corsair doesn't get any credit? Is seasonic helping you with problems with Corsair PSUs?
 
Great review, just confirms my choice of the 620HX (even though I probably only needed the 520HX). I think people look way too much into wattages these days considering even high end rigs do not use that many watts, they just need stable power and Corsair delivers.

Heck, I hooked my rig up to a power meter and it was only pulling around 200w! I know new graphics cards are coming out, but the 620HX should be able to hold most cards easily in common rigs.

Thanks again for a great review and great product!

mentok1982 said:
Congrats to Corsair and Redbeard on a fine product. If I felt like I could go with a PSU under
1KW, I would most definitely get this PSU from Corsair. I will be purchasing the Enermax Galaxy
1KW DXX PSU soon this month, but if it gives me any trouble in the future I will keep my eyes
open for Corsair's next PSU offering.
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Looking at the specs in your sig it seems like you could easily get away with the 620HX.
 
mentok1982 said:
Congrats to Corsair and Redbeard on a fine product. If I felt like I could go with a PSU under 1KW, I would most definitely get this PSU from Corsair. I will be purchasing the Enermax Galaxy 1KW DXX PSU soon this month, but if it gives me any trouble in the future I will keep my eyes open for Corsair's next PSU offering.
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This is all about why better real-world draw numbers are needed. One 8800 and a QX6700 is cake for the Corsair, and if it really delivers 600W (which it apparently does), even an R600 would be well within the realm of possibility, assuming ATI wants to sell more than three of them :p
 
unhappy_mage said:
This is all about why better real-world draw numbers are needed. One 8800 and a QX6700 is cake for the Corsair, and if it really delivers 600W (which it apparently does), even an R600 would be well within the realm of possibility, assuming ATI wants to sell more than three of them :p
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Not only does it...but it has an amazing percentage of it's total output capacity on the 12v.
 
Yet another solid review! Keep up the good work. It would be cool if the Seasonic PSU that this was modelled on could be tested.
 
Good article.:cool:

I am pleased that on the second go a unit passed and got the Gold!

Congrats to the Corsair HX620W Power Supply!

From article:
A quick check of SLIzone shows that NVIDIA has certified this unit only for SLI 7900GTX, which I must admit I find odd given that Corsair has been seen running 8800 series cards in SLI on the HX620W at various press events.
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This is interesting. Care to elaborate? Has anyone at [H] actually used a rig in this configuration?

I would really like to understand why this stable, dependable 620 watt psu will not do for a high demand SLI 8800gtx rig. Is 1 Kw really necessary, or just overkill?
 
The 620 has been tested running SLI 8800GTXs, there's a link to some offical forum about it floating around. I'm sure you could dig it up with a google search. I'm sure it would be fine as long as you were not running many other peripherals as well.
 
Great review! It confirmed what I allready knew; This PSU rocks! I'm loving mine. Best power supply I've ever owned.
 
JOESKURTU said:
Good article.:cool:

I am pleased that on the second go a unit passed and got the Gold!

Congrats to the Corsair HX620W Power Supply!

From article:


This is interesting. Care to elaborate? Has anyone at [H] actually used a rig in this configuration?

I would really like to understand why this stable, dependable 620 watt psu will not do for a high demand SLI 8800gtx rig. Is 1 Kw really necessary, or just overkill?
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I also am curious to know why this power supply hasn't been SLI certified with the 8800 series. Maybe a Corsair rep could shed some light on this?
 
Good review but needs improvements.

Show us the comparison between Seasonic and Corsair. They are made by Seasonic but are these better than Seasonic's?

Show us the highest spec this PSU can do, ie, stress it by running a quadcore overclocked to at least 3.4Ghz and 2x 8800GTX SLI overclocked dramatically and see how well it can run.

While the numbers are great, it would be much more helpful to have them compare to other PSU's in the same price range/watt range.
 
I am really glad that you guys are doing PSU reviews now. One of my trouble spots in building rigs through the years was the PSU that I selected. I had to learn the hard way that PSU's are one of the key and important parts when building your rig and I paid for that lesson.

Needless to say, I may have to upgrade my PSU from my OCZ because I will most likely go to SLI-ed 8800's.

I LOVED my corsair ram I have bought in the past and I only picked up 2gbs of OCZ ram because I had heard good things about it and my PSU from them is amazing (although the actual SATA power connectors died on me, the port was defective.)

My next build will have corsair ram and maybe even one of these PSU's or the newer PSU you guys are hinting at that is being released.

Overall thanks [H]ard for keeping it real, and being my favorite place to research computer and electronic equipment.
 
The article states a price of $150 after rebates, but my searches usually turned up $125 or so after rebates. ZZF has it for that, free shipping plus tax if you're in CA
 
Mons said:
I also am curious to know why this power supply hasn't been SLI certified with the 8800 series. Maybe a Corsair rep could shed some light on this?
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When we were developing the power supply, the ATX 2.2 spec existed which required an 18A OCP point on the +12V rails, which is what we had in development. We ordered boxes, manuals, stickers, etc, for the product. These all have a long lead time and need to be ordered very early, months before the product is for sale at stores.

During this time frame, the ATX 2.4 spec was released, which removed the required 18A OCP point on the +12V rails, allowing us to "combine" the three +12V rails into a single +12V rail, effectively. So while there are three separate physical leads that deliver power, and they all share one +12V source, they no longer have independent OCP points on them, and instead, have a combined OCP point that is much higher.

If we really had an 18A limit on each +12V rail, the PSU wouldn't run 8800GTXs in SLI with a bunch of hard drives. However, since the PSU effectively functions as a single +12V rail 50A PSU, it works just fine.

Unfortunately, because of the way it is spec'd on the labels and box, and the way it is marketed, nVidia would not qualify it for SLI on the 8800GTX or GTS, because they require it to be spec'd a certain way.
 
deeznuts said:
The article states a price of $150 after rebates, but my searches usually turned up $125 or so after rebates. ZZF has it for that, free shipping plus tax if you're in CA
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That is the problem with rebates they do fluctuate so often. Take $150 as a conservative estimate if you can find it for cheaper ;)
 
SentToSchool said:
Show us the highest spec this PSU can do, ie, stress it by running a quadcore overclocked to at least 3.4Ghz and 2x 8800GTX SLI overclocked dramatically and see how well it can run.
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I don't think you quite understand how a load tester works. The SM-8800 is capable of putting a far greater load on a PSU than a system can.
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by SentToSchool
Show us the highest spec this PSU can do, ie, stress it by running a quadcore overclocked to at least 3.4Ghz and 2x 8800GTX SLI overclocked dramatically and see how well it can run.


Paul_Johnson said:
I don't think you quite understand how a load tester works. The SM-8800 is capable of putting a far greater load on a PSU than a system can.
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I wish there was a test that would show how much power a system like this actually consumes. That way, enthusiasts could determine whether they need a 1kw PS or if Corsair's measly 620w would be sufficient.:D
 
Another excellent review from Kyle and the gang ! Although it was JonnyGuru's review of the HX520 that sold me on Corsair as a power supply option.Best built,and certainly the best customer service I have ever seen,hands down !! And rock solid reliability as well
a 5 year warranty.For the price they go for,they cannot be beat IMHO.Kudos to Corsair for a 'Rock of Gibraltar' type product and cs,and to [H] for another killer review :)
 
The all black cables look hot! Before i thought the only way to make a cable look good was to loom it.

Definitely considering this unit for next months build, too bad EVGA is going away from black PCB to match.
 
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