Review: Corsair AX1600i (1,600W)

Conclusion

...excellent efficiency across a wide load, and silent operation inside most PCs, this is the finest PSU we have ever tested.

The Corsair AX1600i is a lesson in deliberately overengineering a product for today's market. Partnering with Flextronics to produce a supply that is truly premium in every regard, we can find no obvious weakness here, save for price, which is to be expected when pushing back the boundaries of what's possible in the consumer PSU market.

Outstanding voltage regulation, class-leading ripple suppression, excellent efficiency across a wide load, and silent operation inside most PCs, this is the finest PSU we have ever tested.

Massively overkill for the regular enthusiast, we recommend it to those of you who won't take second best. If you are building a truly dream rig with a limitless budget, the choice of PSU is disarmingly simple: the Corsair AX1600i.

Bottom line: taking over from the already-excellent AX1500i, this is a ridiculously good supply that's a harbinger of things to come in the premium PSU market.

The Good		The Bad
Fantastic regulation Above-average efficiency Benchmark ripple suppression Reasonable size Practically silent 10-year warranty		Price, but that's expected

Corsair AX1600i (1,600W)

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The Corsair AX1600i is available to purchase from Scan Computers.

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I suppose all the parasitic scum miners will have a need for it, everyone else not so much.

You may wonder, as we did, why the AX1600i doesn't ace this chart, given that it is the only one with 80 PLUS Titanium efficiency. One plausible reason is that running, say, 20W and 40W, which we did, is such a small percentage of total load that the supply cannot hit high efficiencies.

That's not a plausible reason. A plausible reason would be some reason that explained why small percentage of load is less efficient.

If you are building a truly dream rig with a limitless budget, the choice of PSU is disarmingly simple: the Corsair AX1600i.

Seems odd, given the above failing. Ditto the lack of mention in the cons at the end.

the AX1600i's 140mm fan kicks into action at around 700W load

Nice, that's 100W more than the Seasonic Prime 600W Fanless. This would make a good psu for a quiet 1080 Ti build

Considering I like mini-ITX rigs,I think I already have my PSU of choice,the Corsair SF450!! :p

It just shows you how far PSUs have advanced when you can get upto 600W of power in a pint sized PSU(PSUs like the SF600 and the Silverstone equivalents for example),with decent effiency and in the case of the SF450 its not even that noisy!!

kalniel
That's not a plausible reason. A plausible reason would be some reason that explained why small percentage of load is less efficient.

Seems odd, given the above failing. Ditto the lack of mention in the cons at the end.

A power supply draws some power, even at no load - for monitoring, control, fan etc.

At no load, then you have 0% efficiency (on all PSUs)

An advanced power supply that say has a 1W overhead at idle, suffers a 5% drop in efficiency at 20W, even if it could deliver those 20W with no further internal losses.
The internal losses are also going to be higher for a bigger PSU with more parallel output devices, all with their own leakage etc. and operating way down their performance curve.

And also, so what? do you care about losing 10% at 20W if you're gaining 1% at 1000W?

Review: Corsair AX1600i (1,600W)

Conclusion

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