Corsair's AX1200i DSP Controlled PSU
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 4, 2012 10:54 PM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
- Corsair
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- Computex 2012
Corsair introduced its new AX1200i (1200W) PSU with a integrated DSP that controls voltage regulation, resulting in higher efficiency (80 Plus Platinum rated, up to 92% efficiency) and better control over voltage ripple. The DSP allows Corsair to reduce component count within the PSU itself, which increases efficiency and reduces thermal output. As a result, for all loads below 480W the AX1200i is actually fanless by default. You can override the behavior but that's the default.
Corsair exposes control and monitoring of the DSP via a bundled Corsair Link USB adapter and software. You can monitor power consumption on all attached connectors (e.g. PCIe, 24-ping) as well as keep an eye on efficiency and configure over current protection on the PCIe power connectors.
The AX1200i will retail for $350 when it ships in late July/early August.
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ksherman - Tuesday, June 5, 2012 - link
Pretty neat, but I'd love to see this tech trickle down into the $100ish range. Don't need a 1200W PSU myself, but I'm all about efficiency :)MGSsancho - Tuesday, June 5, 2012 - link
This will not trickle down to the ~$100 mark. We must wait for what the hardware is but if there is a micro controller, usb port and extras might cost $50 in added hardware. Corsair will have to recoup the R&D cost of course. You will be looking at $200 on the low end. however this PSU might be good for reviewers in testing power draw of tested components. however Johan has good equipment already for such things. Still this is only useful fr people who are swapping out parts constant or have money to burn.r3loaded - Tuesday, June 5, 2012 - link
My guess is that'll remain exclusive to Corsair's top-end AX line. The cheapest AX available is the AX650, which is $150 so don't expect this in the $100 range.FaaR - Tuesday, June 5, 2012 - link
If you're about efficiency you "need" a PSU with ~50-100% higher capacity than your max power draw, since efficiency tends to drop quite a bit when the PSU approaches its maximum output capacity.So if you have a high-end system that pulls ~500W or more, say an i7 CPU and a dual-GPU setup, this PSU would be a good fit.
Idle power draw on a platinum-rated power supply is very efficient, so no real reason to step down on the PSU to not waste power while idling... Especially as running a 600W PSU at 600W wears its components considerably more than a 1kW PSU running at 600W load.
You don't wanna end up blowing your PSU after all. Doing that could potentially kill every piece of hardware in, or attached to, your PC...
Operandi - Tuesday, June 5, 2012 - link
Interesting, I don't see why you would ever want overide the settings but monitoring is a interesting idea.Also any info on who the OEM is?
Meghan54 - Tuesday, June 5, 2012 - link
Probably one of two OEMs....Seasonic or Flextronics.MrSpadge - Tuesday, June 5, 2012 - link
From the perspective of a microcontroller regulating a PSU seems like a trivial task. Therefore I'd expect the DSP chip to be rather small & cheap. They could even use an FPGA, so they wouldn't depend on huge volumes to drive the price down.Higher efficiency or excellent efficiency at lower cost sounds awsome. The monitoring sounds cool too and might enable new usage cases. E.g. a PC shop offering customers to bringt their own hardware, hook it up to such a PSU and have them read out what PSU they need.