Anyone else had problems with the Corsair AX's ?

thedoc46

thedoc46

thedoc46

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I went all out and bought the flagship AX series (3 of) a few yrs back... I have two kids who like PC's so they have two and i have one...

Anyway, either i've been REALLY unlucky, or there's something up with these PSU's... I've had the AX650 AX750's AX860 AX860i

Anyway, the damn things keep dying on me ! One even toasted my mobo, two SSD's drives and my mechanical drive with EVERYTHING on it, out the box!

Not going to lie, Corsairs customer service has been second to none, and they refunded me for the toasted equipment, and have always exchanged my PSU's.

But yesterday the AX860i which was only replaced in Nov16 by them became unstable.

I think this is either my 3rd of 4th replacement. Its almost becoming the norm every 6 months to have to RMA one back.

Am I Corsair AX jinxed or is there a known issue with their flagship psu's ?
 
Seems a bit strange as those are all high end Seasonic/Flextronics units. I would be inclined to try a different model (RMx/RMi etc) or something different like an EVGA G3 next time it happens and sell the RMA unit.
 
Bad "samples" happen in anything, even in "hundred million dollar" products, but that's definitely weird.

As byproduct of its operation active-PFC PSUs are quite tolerant for example to line voltage changes.
And anyway failure of PSU's primary side should just shut down PSU without any damage to connected parts because secondary keeps regulating output until that "black out".

Still if you can get power quality analyzer from for example utility company that would be one thing to check.
 
Most high end PSU will be using the same core components from the same suppliers, and in general it's these that are the cause of a failure. (If the product isn't DOA)

You can make a capacitor in the best factory under the most stringent condition, but there's always a possibly of a fault that can't be checked that will reduce it's lifespan.

Unfortunately there no way to make a PSU with no failure rate giving the number of different components they use, each of which will have a failure rate even if all them are under 1% in 5 years. When combined that rate will increase.

My AX is 5.5 Years old and run mostly 24/7 in the time, it's just down to luck, usage and environment how long it will run. That was replacement as the first one was almost doa, well it ran for 1 hour. :D And the reason I got my AX was my previous seasonic died after about 6.5 year 24/7 use. The fan failed and I didn't notice so it overheated and went bang while I was playing start Starcraft II, and I was winning . :S
 
My AX650 has presumably been misbehaving recently. It may actually have always been a bit dodgy and just got progressively worse, but the other day - when I got back from a week on holiday - my relatively stable overclock started failing left, right and centre, and then I started getting issues even turning my PC on (not POST'ing). But when I was able to turn my PC on, with everything running stock (BIOS defaults), I've been able to go 10-12 hours straight gaming with zero issues. Yet if I then turn my PC off and go to turn it back on (bearing in mind it was previously running flawlessly), it would again fail to POST with the BIOS still at defaults.

Obviously my initial thought was an unstable overclock, or a RAM or CPU or mobo issue; but it turns out that other owners of AX series PSUs have had eerily similar issues, as documented on Corsair's forums.

I'm going through an RMA process currently, but I must admit that after seeing this thread I am quite tempted to buy an EVGA Supernova G2/P2 and just sell the Corsair RMA unit afterwards.
 
My AX650 died, had it replaced and sold on the replacement so not sure what happened after that.

I knew an ex-Corsair guy, and when I mentioned it a couple of months later he was pretty surprised that it had gone. So it definitely can but I didn't get the impression it was common.
 
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