Gadgetory

this is the courser TX 650 watt power supply it is an 80 plus model with a 5 year warranty it is also sli ready and i'm gonna get a little bit more into that in a minute I actually just did recently a a bit of a feature on a power supply that I would recommend for kind of a basic configuration you know onboard video or a basic to mid-range video card but this is what I would consider more like a step-up model so when you're starting to look into getting like a gaming setup this is sort of where I would begin your searches with something like a 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 you know what why don't I focus on the unboxing first because I'm getting a little bit distracted here ok so let's have a look at the basic features of the TX 650 it is 80 plus ok that's pretty good it is here this is a big one for power supply quality is that many power supplies are actually rated at unrealistically 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 over current protection and then we've got high quality Japanese capacitors and we have compatibility guaranteed with dual GPU configurations that goes into the hole 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 I went and opened it from the wrong side well that's not very good is it my ruler nice today slice that open okay so let's have a look at the TX 650 it comes with the same manual as the TX 750 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 standard silver ones alright 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 see sonic 400 watt for our 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 58 50 or higher you should be starting at around a 550 to a 650 watt quality power supply you can see that as you step up into a more a 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 grey 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 cables 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 random stuff okay so we'll have a quick look at this power supply just in general you got your Corsair TX sticker on this I'd very sharp-looking their power supply's always look good you've got you're rated amperages on the top of the unit so you can see I talked a little bit in my C Sonic 1 about how a strong 12 volt rail is so important to a good quality power supply this 650 watt unit can provide 624 watts almost its entire output on the 12 volt rail very cool very good to see next we've got a standard 120 millimeter fan you tend to see 120 millimeter fans and most of the gaming units because they do run quieter and the last thing you want when you you know fire up your gaming computers to hear nothing but the sound of your PC rather than the actual sound of the games next you've got an on/off switch at the back 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 plus 4 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 8 hard drives natively with 4 SATA cable 4 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 usually you don't run into shortages on those these days and then this so our 400 watt unit only had a single PCI Express connector whereas this one has two 6+2 pin PCI Express connectors that means that you could either plug in two video cards that each except one so you could plug in a couple of 50 770's or a couple of older generation ones or you can plug in one video card that takes an 8 pin and a 6 pin something like a 5970 so like a 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 8 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