Corsair RM Series intro'd

PSUs: The source of DC power for all components in the PC & often a big noise source.

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Corsair RM Series intro'd

Post by CA_Steve » Thu Sep 12, 2013 8:21 am

Gold efficiency, semi-passive fan profile, flat cabling. PR here. Product Page for the 550W model here.

Abula
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Re: Corsair RM Series intro'd

Post by Abula » Thu Sep 12, 2013 8:53 am

Interesting.... the TX series imo were never quiet oriented, and the marketing of this series seems to replace this series, TX was bronze RM is gold, TX never stoped the fans while the RM does, this seems like AX series when they were gold.... or to compete with seasonic X gold. Wondering who will be the manufacturer, with Seasonic n Flextronics bieng their main source.

One interesting thing about this new RM series is that the fan is suppose to be govern by load and not temperature like on Seasonic and Kingwin,

Image

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Re: Corsair RM Series intro'd

Post by CA_Steve » Thu Sep 12, 2013 12:37 pm

One interesting thing about this new RM series is that the fan is suppose to be govern by load and not temperature like on Seasonic and Kingwin
...or this was the easiest way to show it. I bet it's still thermal based.

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Re: Corsair RM Series intro'd

Post by mkk » Thu Sep 12, 2013 1:25 pm

Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if the sales department drew the graph themselves too. But we'll see I guess.

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Re: Corsair RM Series intro'd

Post by Mettyx » Thu Sep 12, 2013 1:31 pm

I'm hoping to see more about this because it sounds too good to be true, they say they even optimized all the components so there is no coil whine which often happens even if the fan is not spinning thus completely destroying the point of it.

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Re: Corsair RM Series intro'd

Post by CA_Steve » Thu Sep 12, 2013 1:52 pm

Mettyx wrote:I'm hoping to see more about this because it sounds too good to be true, they say they even optimized all the components so there is no coil whine which often happens even if the fan is not spinning thus completely destroying the point of it.
Magic 8 ball says "try again" :) I don't get what you mean.

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Re: Corsair RM Series intro'd

Post by Abula » Thu Sep 12, 2013 3:36 pm


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Re: Corsair RM Series intro'd

Post by Abula » Thu Sep 12, 2013 10:48 pm

No official confirmation yet, but seems it will be two manufacturers,
CWT: 450~650 & 1000
Chicony: 750 & 850
George Corsair rep is making claims over at OCN,
RM is the quietest PSU we've ever made, and might be the quietest in the world.
Hope SPCR gets some samples, would love to see 550 and 850, so we get from both manufacturers.

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Re: Corsair RM Series intro'd

Post by laststop » Sat Sep 14, 2013 7:44 pm

these look really awesome. But the platinum seasonics cost the same. Do I really want to pay the same price for a gold rated psu?

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7333/cors ... r-supplies

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Re: Corsair RM Series intro'd

Post by Abula » Sat Sep 14, 2013 9:02 pm

laststop wrote:these look really awesome. But the platinum seasonics cost the same. Do I really want to pay the same price for a gold rated psu?

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7333/cors ... r-supplies
I dont think Seasonic Platinum cost the same, maybe on sales, but let say for example the Seasonic Platinum 1000 is usually $230 the RM is $180, the Platinum 860 is usually $200 and drops to $170 on sales, the RM850 is $147, and so on. Their AX series usually has close prices with seasonic platinum.

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Re: Corsair RM Series intro'd

Post by lodestar » Sun Sep 15, 2013 4:14 am

laststop wrote:these look really awesome. But the platinum seasonics cost the same. Do I really want to pay the same price for a gold rated psu?
My local hardware dealer here in the UK is already stocking most of the range. Prices seem to be closer to the Seasonic G series gold psus rather than the platinums. At 850W and above they undercut the equivalent X-series units.

450W RM £79, G-450 £69

550W RM £87, G-550 £76

650W RM £93, G-650 £98

750W RM £100, G-750 £105

The 850W RM at £125 is less than the X-850 gold at £152, the 1000W RM is £150 as against the £171 of the Seasonic X-1050 gold.

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Re: Corsair RM Series intro'd

Post by CA_Steve » Sun Sep 15, 2013 7:47 am

Code: Select all

My local hardware dealer here in the UK is already stocking most of the range.
Well, what are you waiting for? Buy a couple and try them out. Inquiring minds... :)

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Re: Corsair RM Series intro'd

Post by kuzzia » Sun Sep 15, 2013 12:43 pm

Wow! The 450 W is perfect for my needs and I could definitely deal with the price.

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Re: Corsair RM Series intro'd

Post by lodestar » Sun Sep 15, 2013 1:46 pm

It will be interesting to see to what extent Corsair's claims about lack of PSU electrical noise are actually delivered in practice. This blog article deals with the problem of 'coil whine' in some depth. According to Corsair it's primarily a quality control issue.

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Re: Corsair RM Series intro'd

Post by jonnyGURU » Thu Sep 19, 2013 10:29 am

RM isn't supposed to replace TX feature for feature. It's just the fact that it's 80 Plus Gold, instead of Bronze... fully modular, instead of semi-modular.... and super quiet instead of average noise levels.... at the same price point, why the heck would anyone want TX anymore when you can get the RM instead?

Performance wise, the HX is still a better PSU, so it won't replace that. Though the RM is still a quieter unit. Not that the HX is "bad", but Corsair has made more strides in reducing noise since the HX was initially launched. I'm sure it's only a matter of time before the HX is replaced with a quieter version.

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Re: Corsair RM Series intro'd

Post by CA_Steve » Thu Sep 19, 2013 12:25 pm

Newegg is listing them now with stock Oct 30. MSRP places them between the Seasonic G series and the Platinum X.

Gonna review one of these, jonny?

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Re: Corsair RM Series intro'd

Post by lb_felipe » Thu Sep 19, 2013 12:40 pm

Among the ones made by CWT and made ​​by Chicony (Hipro), which are supposed to be better on noise (assuming none of them have coil whine, then what are the coldest and efficient, in order that they do not begin to turn their fans too early and not using a high speed at full load)?

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Re: Corsair RM Series intro'd

Post by jonnyGURU » Thu Sep 19, 2013 1:17 pm

CA_Steve wrote:Newegg is listing them now with stock Oct 30. MSRP places them between the Seasonic G series and the Platinum X.

Gonna review one of these, jonny?
Jeremy already has one in his hands. Actually, I think there's a bunch of review samples out there, all of different wattages (except the 450W and 1000W because of delays at CWT), but there's a 9/23 embargo. On Monday, you should see a bunch of reviews pop up.
lb_felipe wrote:Among the ones made by CWT and made ​​by Chicony (Hipro), which are supposed to be better on noise (assuming none of them have coil whine, then what are the coldest and efficient, in order that they do not begin to turn their fans too early and not using a high speed at full load)?
CWT vs. Chicony on component noise, the same. These aren't rebadged units and the components that were selected and used that were potential noise candidates are the same in both units despite the OEM. As for fan speed.. the 850W actually has the best fan speed profile. It's overkill for 99% of the people out there, but if the fan doesn't spin until 40% load (at 25°C ambient for an hour) and even then it only spins at 667 RPM (12.4 dbA measured) and stays there until 70% load, odds are that fan is never going to spin during average use.

The 450W and 550W have the same fan profile. 560 RPM (10.9 dbA) @ 40% load and it holds that until 80% when it jumps up to 726 RPM (14.3 dbA). Still pretty decent.

The 650W is probably the loudest at full loads. More than anything because it's taking that same CWT platform for the 450W and 550W and maximizing the maximum output wattage in the same cramped space. While the fan only spins at 560 RPM initially, it jumps up to 744, 888 and then a maximum of 1050 RPM (24.8 dbA :shock:) when really pushed.

The other thing you want to remember about the fan speed is it's actually ramping up depending on temperature and time. Since that sort of thing is hard to communicate in simple graphs, they use % of load in the marketing collateral instead. But I've got PAL reports that show that most of the time, at 25°C, the fan doesn't even spin until the load is sustained for at least an hour. Obviously, higher ambient temperature will cause the fan to spin up sooner, but with so many cases allowing you to mount the PSU at the bottom, fan side down, you rarely have higher than room temperature PSU intake temps anymore.

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Re: Corsair RM Series intro'd

Post by Abula » Thu Sep 19, 2013 2:36 pm

Thanks jonny for sharing your psu wisdow with us,
jonnyGURU wrote:Jeremy already has one in his hands. Actually, I think there's a bunch of review samples out there, all of different wattages (except the 450W and 1000W because of delays at CWT), but there's a 9/23 embargo. On Monday, you should see a bunch of reviews pop up.
Looking foward to your review, the PSU seems promising.
jonnyGURU wrote:As for fan speed.. the 850W actually has the best fan speed profile. It's overkill for 99% of the people out there, but if the fan doesn't spin until 40% load (at 25°C ambient for an hour) and even then it only spins at 667 RPM (12.4 dbA measured) and stays there until 70% load, odds are that fan is never going to spin during average use.
You are tempting me to get one, but i believe this one is 180mm, not sure if ill be able to mantain the bottom fan on Define/Acr Midi, so might just go with seasonic SS860
jonnyGURU wrote:but with so many cases allowing you to mount the PSU at the bottom, fan side down, you rarely have higher than room temperature PSU intake temps anymore.
This is something that im really interested, not only on the RM but in general, maybe since you have tested so many powersuplies and hotboxes you could expand some. I mean i though for PSU like seasonic X and kingwin lzp, that ideally they should be fan up since they are mostly passive on light loads/temps, allowing hot air to go out or even the use case aiflow to cool themselves (kinda like the same principle on Seasonic X400/460), but what you are saying with the fan down, will allow lower temp as its close to ambient even though there is no direct airflow without the fan???

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Re: Corsair RM Series intro'd

Post by jonnyGURU » Thu Sep 19, 2013 2:49 pm

Abula wrote:
jonnyGURU wrote:but with so many cases allowing you to mount the PSU at the bottom, fan side down, you rarely have higher than room temperature PSU intake temps anymore.
This is something that im really interested, not only on the RM but in general, maybe since you have tested so many powersuplies and hotboxes you could expand some. I mean i though for PSU like seasonic X and kingwin lzp, that ideally they should be fan up since they are mostly passive on light loads/temps, allowing hot air to go out or even the use case aiflow to cool themselves (kinda like the same principle on Seasonic X400/460), but what you are saying with the fan down, will allow lower temp as its close to ambient even though there is no direct airflow without the fan???
IF your case has negative airflow, then a fanless PSU could maintain low noise when mounted fan up simply from natural aspiration. It just depends on your build. Typically, in a tower ATX at least, you have the graphics card right there over the PSU intake fan, so once that fan kicks in, it's sucking hot air around the neighborhood of the graphics card.

But you're correct, if you were to get the 850W, but only needed say 500W, that fan would never need to run and you could put that thing anywhere. But say you needed and had a 450W or 550W. The fan will spin up sooner, at lower temperatures, and won't shut off as long as it's sucking hot air into a hot PSU.

But PSUs can really be fanless for quite some time and not have any detrimental effect on the components. I mean, think about it: A Gold PSU is 90% efficient at 50% load. So if you've got a 600W PSU at 300W, you only have 30W of heat to deal with. ;)

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Re: Corsair RM Series intro'd

Post by quest_for_silence » Thu Sep 19, 2013 3:37 pm

jonnyGURU wrote:RM isn't supposed to replace TX feature for feature. It's just the fact that it's 80 Plus Gold, instead of Bronze... fully modular, instead of semi-modular.... and super quiet instead of average noise levels.... at the same price point, why the heck would anyone want TX anymore when you can get the RM instead?

Performance wise, the HX is still a better PSU, so it won't replace that. Though the RM is still a quieter unit. Not that the HX is "bad", but Corsair has made more strides in reducing noise since the HX was initially launched. I'm sure it's only a matter of time before the HX is replaced with a quieter version.
If I may ask, and putting aside any pricing issues, would you make your educated guess about how the RM-series compares against the recently reviewed Antec HCP-850 Platinum, acoustically-wise I mean?

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Re: Corsair RM Series intro'd

Post by CA_Steve » Thu Sep 19, 2013 3:59 pm

jonnyGURU wrote:Jeremy already has one in his hands. Actually, I think there's a bunch of review samples out there, all of different wattages (except the 450W and 1000W because of delays at CWT), but there's a 9/23 embargo. On Monday, you should see a bunch of reviews pop up.
Cool beans. Thanks for the info.

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Re: Corsair RM Series intro'd

Post by lodestar » Sun Sep 22, 2013 10:20 pm

A review of the RM 550 by PC Perspective, of which the most relevant page is maybe this one. The PSU fan does not run until at least 50% load on this model.

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Re: Corsair RM Series intro'd

Post by quest_for_silence » Sun Sep 22, 2013 11:30 pm

lodestar wrote:A review of the RM 550 by PC Perspective, of which the most relevant page is maybe this one. The PSU fan does not run until at least 50% load on this model.

It's monday: I guess Jeremy is going to make his own frightening (howling?) entrance in the reviews' arena for the RM-series... ;)

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Re: Corsair RM Series intro'd

Post by jonnyGURU » Mon Sep 23, 2013 10:42 am

lodestar wrote:A review of the RM 550 by PC Perspective, of which the most relevant page is maybe this one. The PSU fan does not run until at least 50% load on this model.
Like I said, it's temperature AND time based. So either it wasn't hot enough in his lab and/or he didn't have the load on it for very long.
quest_for_silence wrote: It's monday: I guess Jeremy is going to make his own frightening (howling?) entrance in the reviews' arena for the RM-series... ;)
Yeah.... I think it's lower down the line. He's got a chassis and a different PSU queued up before the RM. :(

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Re: Corsair RM Series intro'd

Post by lodestar » Mon Sep 23, 2013 11:19 am

jonnyGURU wrote:Like I said, it's temperature AND time based. So either it wasn't hot enough in his lab and/or he didn't have the load on it for very long.
The UK site, Hexus.net, has published a RM 750w review today, their results seem to be closer to what Corsair claim, with the fan turning on just before the 40% load mark.

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Re: Corsair RM Series intro'd

Post by CA_Steve » Mon Sep 23, 2013 11:41 am

Once we see it in a hot box, we'll have a better idea of what to expect. Early reviews look promising, though.

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Re: Corsair RM Series intro'd

Post by Abula » Mon Sep 23, 2013 11:47 am

Really wanting to see JonnyGuru, HardwareSecrets, HardOCP, TechPowerUp and specially SPCR reviews on these PSUs.

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Re: Corsair RM Series intro'd

Post by merlin » Wed Sep 25, 2013 10:23 am

I heard there's an embargo on reviews until some date within a week or so. So coming soon!

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Re: Corsair RM Series intro'd

Post by jonnyGURU » Wed Sep 25, 2013 10:29 am

No. Embargo was Monday. It was early and kept shifting due to late ship dates. That caused some reviewers to shuffle and actually putting doing their RM Series reviews on the back burner. 450W and 1000W still haven't shipped and those that requested those wattages for review actually didn't even get a chance to change to a different wattage until about a week ago. :(

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