Corsair AX1200i Power Supply 80PLUS Platinum PSU Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2013-05-07
·
2,116 words · ~10 min read
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welcome to my unboxing and first look at the Corsair
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ax1200i so this is an improvement over
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the original ax 800 and there's did I say ax 800 cuz what I really meant to
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say was ax1200 and there's a few things that they've done differently so first
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let's go over the Box itself digital ATX
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power supply so meaning they're using digitally controlled power for tighter
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regulation quiet efficient operation and there's
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more to this than actually meets the eye it's fully modular just like the
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original ax1200 supports Corsair link yes quiet efficient operations so using
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Corsair link you can actually not only
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monitor the efficiency of the power supply you can also control things like
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fan profiles which has not yet been seen
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in uh well yeah ever I mean I think I've
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seen power supplies that have a dial on the back where you can sort of adjust
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the fan profile but this is more robust
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um they've also added 80 plus Platinum certification as opposed to the 80 plus
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gold certification of the original 1200 here's some modular cables that we're
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actually going to have a look at once we open it up so we're not going to worry too much about that okay digitally
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control Power for solid voltage regulation and outstanding performance upgraded internal components and digital
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design for ad80 plus Platinum configuration this is a great picture uh
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fully modular cables for quick and EAS installation okay so this is more of the same in terms of what they have to say
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for themselves so let's have a look at the back 80 plus Platinum basically
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means 90 plus Because unless you're at see even at 100% load you're just under
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that 90% Mark even on 115 volt input and
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if you're using 230 volt if you're in Europe or Asia or wherever else you'll
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actually basically unless you're at like you know 5% system load you're never
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going to fall below 90 you know 91 92% efficiency which is
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outstanding the fan doesn't even turn on until you reach 30% and I'm assuming
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this is just the stock profile because if you're using Corsair link you will be
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able to know how well your ax1200i is working at any given moment it lets you
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quickly tweak its performance so server Inspire diagnostic tools monitor
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real-time efficiency power usage configurable overcurrent protection
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points and fan profiles so overcurrent
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protection has been a bit of a Hot Topic
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because there's this constant back and forth debate
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do you want a multi-rail power supply with overcurrent protection applied in a
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way that would you know prevent um
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potential problems do you want a single rail power supply that can basically
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have the flexibility to power whatever components you plug into it no matter
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where you plug them in and Corsair is basically giving you the flexibility to
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go okay look we're giving you a single Rail and we're giving you the ability to
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actually control how the safety features are going to work to according to
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whatever you're comfortable with you don't see this very often though it's uh
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capable of providing 1,
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124.80 mm cooling fan rounds out the
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list of features so now let's have a look at what's in the box so what
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Corsair is so good at compared to
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basically everyone else is products that
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work well together and look great
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together if you go with h we actually did a PC at NCI the store where I work
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uh we did a PC not that long ago that was all Corsair and ASUS premium branded
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parts and the end result was outstanding
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because all the parts work really well together and look really good together
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and the PC looked a lot more expensive than it actually was just due to the
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part selection that we used so that's just you know cool thing to be aware of
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and this oh look at that there's your Corsair link connector so you plug in by
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USB and then you've got uh of course their link adapter right there cool
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beans power cable nice thick one okay download the latest link
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dashboard software please visit there
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cool modular cable take a look at those after uh zip ties as well as of course
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their case badge some screws excellent
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users manual not going to worry too much about that now let's have a look at the
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power supply itself so it comes in a nice velvety baggie and see again things
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Corsair understands excellent quality foam you could pretty much you know what
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it' be kind of funny to do this but um you could pretty much drop that off a
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couple story building and I'm sure your power supply would survive to I mean
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don't do this you know please don't you know oh I bought a new cors areax 1200i
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today lonus and I'm going to throw it off my you know apartment complex
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because you said it would probably live be like no just no U so don't do it but
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I suspect it would be fine because it's
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an extremely robust packing material they're using and that's important
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because when you order your new system the last thing you want to do is get
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everything all unpacked and assembled and turn it on and doesn't work and
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packaging plays a big role in that so there's our 140 mil fan they've actually
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gone with quite a different aesthetic compared to the ax uh Noni Series so
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they've got a bit of a glossy shininess to the sticker now as well as a bit of
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uh texture and you know character to the
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overall shape of the of the metal so they've gone with a bit of a different
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fan Grill they still got the circular bars in there so you can't accidentally
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get anything in there 140 mil fan still got you know kind of a neat kind of
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looking thing here got your typical honeycomb Grill on the back with an
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onoff switch as well as your power in and then we find the modular interface
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so here we go oh cool okay so let's go
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let's let's do cables first I suppose so
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you got your 24 pin cable this pretty much stands to reason course they again
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they're so good at this all black
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cables beautiful actually give me a sec guys now these are the best quality
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included cables I think I've yet encountered so there's a few things
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about them that are kind of special so one we're used to that is the black
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black wires so that's fantastic number two is this is the best sleeving that
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I've ever seen included on a stock um on
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a stock sleeved power supply also the
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wires themselves are very very flexible very bendy and just have that you know
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that well that quality feel about them it's not going to impact performance in
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all likelihood but they look good they
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feel good and like I said the this is just like there's no gaps very dense
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sleeving compared to what you see on lesser lesser power supply products so
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included cables you've got two nice long
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four plus 4 pin connectors so you can support up to a dual 8 Pin motherboard
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without any difficulty whatsoever you've also got the flexibility of up to
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eight uh selectable either 6 Plus tws or
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4 plus four so it comes with two four plus floors and six uh 6 plus 2 so that
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is PCI Express connector so you could do up to like an Uber motherboard with
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three dual cable graphics cards without
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any difficulty whatsoever however if you only needed uh let's say for example you
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only needed one eight pin but there's an auxiliary six pen on your motherboard
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and you could Source another cable you could actually use it for that so you
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can use them for whichever purpose you require you've got other included cables
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as well so you've got uh four by SATA
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cables Galore four of those and then you've got a bunch of Molex connectors
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as well so three uh three Molex four
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pins so you're only going to be able to plug in six of these but I think that
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should still be plenty I mean that gives you up to 12 drives did I say 12 cuz
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what I meant to say was 16 and then plus another you know 4X uh plus another four
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mole x's and then another so another 8 Mo X connectors if you can't power
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everything in your system at that point then you're probably doing something wrong on the back you also find a couple
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more things so one is a self test which is kind of cool to have included and oh
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right sorry a couple more things uh Molex to floppies there's two just in
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case you need them again very nice black sleeve or not black sleeve black wires
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and then there's this guy right here so that's the comp Port so l u whoops slick
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an eye that could be short for anything uh
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slick and I uh deduced that there's probably some kind of a cable that plugs
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into here but we couldn't figure out where it was and then we kind of went oh
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maybe it's in the cable bag so we dug through it and that is where you are
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able to plug in this to here and then
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the link to uh here and then that
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to go in there and that to USB and then
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slick sort of was like well if this is going to be mounted inside your case
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somewhere it should probably come with like double-sided tape on the back to
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which I responded bam because there's double-sided tape
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included in the little accessory
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baggie of course's good at these kinds of things so the ax 1200i is right side
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up no matter which way you mount your power supply oh you can do it again oh
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didn't work the cables are too Twisted um great looks great performance what
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else is there to really say cors our link compatibility is going to be huge
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for the tweaker and the gamer who really wants to monitor every last detail of
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their system and I think that pretty much wraps this up so thank you for checking out my unboxing and first look
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at the Corsair ax 1200i 80 plus Platinum
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power supply don't forget to subscribe to L's Tech tips for more unboxings
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okay so uh I know I didn't throw it off a
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building but I'm sort of hoping this will make my point
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so even if your Courier like really abuses it bearing in mind that your box
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will be sealed and we probably should have taped it shut before we did this uh
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because that caused the box to to open
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so there you go there's some uh some Crush damage on the corner there there's
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some this is about as bad as you could expect it to arrive from your Courier
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and we're going to go ahead and investigate here so you can see that uh
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there's enough foam padding here to
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choke a horse or at least stop a fall
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from damaging your power supply and because it's a soft foam I I know I harp
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on soft foam but because it's a soft foam there's also no damage to the foam
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which means we could actually throw it out of the car again and it would survive whereas with a hard foam once
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it's broken the structural Integrity is dead and uh you don't get oh it's windy
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it's going to blow away all the paper and then I'll be a litterer okay so
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we're going to pull out the power supply and determine that it is indeed
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unscathed within its protective
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packaging so good don't forget to
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