Corsair TX650 650W Power Supply Unboxing & First Look & Gaming Buyer's Guide Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
1,346 words · ~6 min read
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this is the Corsair TX 650 wat power supply it is an 80 plus model with a
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5-year warranty it is also SLI ready and I'm going to get a little bit more into
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that in a minute I actually just did recently a uh a bit of a feature on a
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power supply that I would recommend for kind of a a basic configuration you know
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Onboard video or a a basic to mid-range
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video card but this is what I would consider more like a stepup model so
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when you're starting to look into getting like a gaming setup this is sort
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of where I would begin your Search is with something like a uh anything in
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about the 550 to 650 watt range is going to be pretty good as long as you're
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running a single card but uh you know what why don't I focus on the unboxing
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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
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it is 80 plus okay that's pretty good it is here this is a big one for power
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supply uh quality is that many power
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supplies are actually rated at unrealistically low low temperatures and
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any power supply is going to operate more efficiently at a low temperature
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that goes for many many electronics this power supply is guaranteed to deliver
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its rated specs even at a reasonably high temperature that's a big one okay
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you got a dedicated single 12 volt rail so it doesn't matter what you plug into
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what connector you're never going to trigger your overcurrent protection and
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then we've got highquality Japanese capacitors and we have compatibility
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guaranteed with dual GPU configurations that goes into into the whole SLI ready
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thing I think that pretty much covers it for the basic specs and then we have the
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connectors included which is covered by a sticker very conveniently I'm going to
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go ahead and remove that sticker from the okay I'm not going to remove that
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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
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and opened it from the wrong side well that's not very good is
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it got my ruler knife today slice that
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open Okay so let's have a look at the TX 650 it comes with the same manual as the
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TX750 there's some good stuff in there I'm sure that if you buy one you'll read
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it next we have a power cord this is just your bog standard PC power cord
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yeah of course there includes some black zip ties so you can manage your cables
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without using ugly clear plastic zip ties and they have a little powered by
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Corsair sticker very nice they also include some black thumb screws goes
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along with the overall black finish of this unit use black thumb screws to
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attach it to your case instead of the uh standard silver ones all right let's
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have a look at the connectors included on this power supply and I do want to
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talk a little bit more about my whole power supply selection guide that I'm
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sort of working on here now I recommended the cic 400 watt for a basic
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power supply this like I said before is where I would start for more like a
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gaming or a more powerful system power supply so if you're configuring your
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system with something like a core i7 CPU or you're putting in a dedicated video
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card like a Radeon 5850 or higher you should be starting at around a 550 to a
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650 wat quality power supply you can see
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that as you step up into a more uh gaming oriented power supply you start
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to see a few key improvements over a
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more generic one so first of all you've got a black finish because many gaming
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cases have window these Windows these days and so it can be important for the
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aesthetic look of your system to have a black power supply rather than like a
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gray hunk of Unfinished metal sitting in the bottom that's one of the reasons
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that people tend to choose a more gaming oriented power supply next you got
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sleeve cable so instead of your Rainbow of colors
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coming out of the power supply and then running all over your case you've got
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nice black cables that will just kind of terminate in just a little bit of color
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it gives a much tidier look and it has the additional benefit of not blocking
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air flow as much because when you bundle the cables together it's easier for the
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air flow to get around it and not cause dust build up then if you have it all
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kind of running like this acting as a as a web to catch all that dust and ren
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stuff okay so we'll have a quick look at this power supply just in general you
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got your Corsair TX sticker on the side very sharp looking their power supplies
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always look good you've got your rated uh amperages on the top of the unit so
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you can see I talked a little bit in my cic one about how a strong 12volt rail
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is so important to a good quality power supply this 650 wat unit can provide 624
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Watts almost its entire output on the 12volt rail very cool very good to see
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next we've got a standard uh 120 mm fan
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you tend to see 120 mm fans in most of the gaming units because they do run
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quieter and the last thing you want when you you know fire up your gaming
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computer is to hear nothing but the sound of your PC rather than the actual
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sound of the games next you've got an onoff switch at the back a standard
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honeycomb Grill as well as a power plug
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in terms of connectors gaming power supplies you'll find all of the standard
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stuff so you're going to have your 4 plus4 or 8 Pin CPU connector you're
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going to have your 24 pin motherboard connector next you're going to find lots
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and lots of SATA cables so this power
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supply can actually accept up to eight hard drives natively with four SATA
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cable uh four SATA connectors on two dedicated cables so a gaming power
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supply a more high-end power supply is going to give you more expansion options
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for the future because you've just got more connectors next you've got a bunch
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of molexes uh usually you don't run into shortages on those these days and then
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this so our 400 wat unit only had a single PCI Express connector whereas
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this one has two 6 plus2 pin PCI Express
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connectors that means that you could either plug in two video cards that each
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accept one so you could plug in a couple of 57 70s or a couple of older
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generation ones or you can plug in one
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video card that takes an 8 pin and a six pin something like a 5970 so like a du
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dual GPU graphics card would run very comfortably off something like a TX 650
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or you could plug in two separate video cards that each take eight pin
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connectors so you've got a lot more options when you start to move up into a
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higher quality unit so basically what I would say is if
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you're configuring a gaming system and you're planning to maybe go SLI or
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Crossfire in the future with a couple of sort of mid-range gpus this is where I
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would start and then looking at sort of other units in that particular price
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range