this is the Corsair TX 650 wat power supply it is an 80 plus model with a
5-year warranty it is also SLI ready and I'm going to get a little bit more into
that in a minute I actually just did recently a uh a bit of a feature on a
power supply that I would recommend for kind of a a basic configuration you know
Onboard video or a a basic to mid-range
video card but this is what I would consider more like a stepup model so
when you're starting to look into getting like a gaming setup this is sort
of where I would begin your Search is with something like a uh anything in
about the 550 to 650 watt range is going to be pretty good as long as you're
running a single card but uh you know what why don't I focus on the unboxing
first cuz I'm getting a little bit distracted here okay so let's have a look at the basic features of the TX 650
it is 80 plus okay that's pretty good it is here this is a big one for power
supply uh quality is that many power
supplies are actually rated at unrealistically low low temperatures and
any power supply is going to operate more efficiently at a low temperature
that goes for many many electronics this power supply is guaranteed to deliver
its rated specs even at a reasonably high temperature that's a big one okay
you got a dedicated single 12 volt rail so it doesn't matter what you plug into
what connector you're never going to trigger your overcurrent protection and
then we've got highquality Japanese capacitors and we have compatibility
guaranteed with dual GPU configurations that goes into into the whole SLI ready
thing I think that pretty much covers it for the basic specs and then we have the
connectors included which is covered by a sticker very conveniently I'm going to
go ahead and remove that sticker from the okay I'm not going to remove that
sticker from the box why don't we just look at the connectors when we open it up make life easier for myself oh I went
and opened it from the wrong side well that's not very good is
it got my ruler knife today slice that
open Okay so let's have a look at the TX 650 it comes with the same manual as the
TX750 there's some good stuff in there I'm sure that if you buy one you'll read
it next we have a power cord this is just your bog standard PC power cord
yeah of course there includes some black zip ties so you can manage your cables
without using ugly clear plastic zip ties and they have a little powered by
Corsair sticker very nice they also include some black thumb screws goes
along with the overall black finish of this unit use black thumb screws to
attach it to your case instead of the uh standard silver ones all right let's
have a look at the connectors included on this power supply and I do want to
talk a little bit more about my whole power supply selection guide that I'm
sort of working on here now I recommended the cic 400 watt for a basic
power supply this like I said before is where I would start for more like a
gaming or a more powerful system power supply so if you're configuring your
system with something like a core i7 CPU or you're putting in a dedicated video
card like a Radeon 5850 or higher you should be starting at around a 550 to a
650 wat quality power supply you can see
that as you step up into a more uh gaming oriented power supply you start
to see a few key improvements over a
more generic one so first of all you've got a black finish because many gaming
cases have window these Windows these days and so it can be important for the
aesthetic look of your system to have a black power supply rather than like a
gray hunk of Unfinished metal sitting in the bottom that's one of the reasons
that people tend to choose a more gaming oriented power supply next you got
sleeve cable so instead of your Rainbow of colors
coming out of the power supply and then running all over your case you've got
nice black cables that will just kind of terminate in just a little bit of color
it gives a much tidier look and it has the additional benefit of not blocking
air flow as much because when you bundle the cables together it's easier for the
air flow to get around it and not cause dust build up then if you have it all
kind of running like this acting as a as a web to catch all that dust and ren
stuff okay so we'll have a quick look at this power supply just in general you
got your Corsair TX sticker on the side very sharp looking their power supplies
always look good you've got your rated uh amperages on the top of the unit so
you can see I talked a little bit in my cic one about how a strong 12volt rail
is so important to a good quality power supply this 650 wat unit can provide 624
Watts almost its entire output on the 12volt rail very cool very good to see
next we've got a standard uh 120 mm fan
you tend to see 120 mm fans in most of the gaming units because they do run
quieter and the last thing you want when you you know fire up your gaming
computer is to hear nothing but the sound of your PC rather than the actual
sound of the games next you've got an onoff switch at the back a standard
honeycomb Grill as well as a power plug
in terms of connectors gaming power supplies you'll find all of the standard
stuff so you're going to have your 4 plus4 or 8 Pin CPU connector you're
going to have your 24 pin motherboard connector next you're going to find lots
and lots of SATA cables so this power
supply can actually accept up to eight hard drives natively with four SATA
cable uh four SATA connectors on two dedicated cables so a gaming power
supply a more high-end power supply is going to give you more expansion options
for the future because you've just got more connectors next you've got a bunch
of molexes uh usually you don't run into shortages on those these days and then
this so our 400 wat unit only had a single PCI Express connector whereas
this one has two 6 plus2 pin PCI Express
connectors that means that you could either plug in two video cards that each
accept one so you could plug in a couple of 57 70s or a couple of older
generation ones or you can plug in one
video card that takes an 8 pin and a six pin something like a 5970 so like a du
dual GPU graphics card would run very comfortably off something like a TX 650
or you could plug in two separate video cards that each take eight pin
connectors so you've got a lot more options when you start to move up into a
higher quality unit so basically what I would say is if
you're configuring a gaming system and you're planning to maybe go SLI or
Crossfire in the future with a couple of sort of mid-range gpus this is where I
would start and then looking at sort of other units in that particular price
range