Corsair Blog - ax1200

I got a new phone this week, the Droid Incredible. My previous phone found its way into the washing machine and sadly never recovered. I must say, the Incredible is a very nice piece of hardware but the only thing truly "incredible" about it is the incredibly short battery life. If anyone has any tips on how to extend the battery life, please post in the comments! I've got GPS turned off and I hardly use it while at work but the battery usually dead by 1PM after a full night of charging!  

Speaking of incredible, Hardware Canucks reviewed the Hydro Series™ H70 CPU Cooler and gave it their "Dam Good" and "Dam Innovative" awards. Oh, you crazy Canadians, I see what you did there.

"The use of a double-thickness radiator and a highly compact water block / pump combination usually results in high temperatures but that hasn't happened here. Instead, through engineering excellence Corsair has designed what is currently one of the best (if not THE best) closed loop water cooling systems on the market."  

Legit Reviews had a look at the Air Series™ A70 CPU Cooler and had some very nice things to say about it after comparing it to some of the best CPU coolers on the market.

"Legit Bottom Line: Corsair's first step into the air cooling market was a good one and the A70 CPU cooler is a very solid performing CPU cooler!"  

Finally, Funky Kit posted a massive round-up review of fifteen different power supplies, including the Enthusiast Series™ TX950 PSU which came away with the Editor's Choice, and the Professional Series™ HX750 power supply which came away with their Recommended award in the power user category. Can we get a championship belt too?

"For the highend power supplies, we can see that the Corsair TX950W is an excellent performer. It produced an amazing power efficiency rating of 88%, which is on par with the Coolermaster Silent Pro M1000. However, Corsair TX950W went further, producing a solid 12V reading and capable of handling whopping 98A at full load."

Well, that's about it for me this week. Have a great weekend!

The Corsair Force Series F40 solid-state drive is best way to bring your system into the 21^st century. Utilizing the SandForce® SF-1222 SSD Processor, and with a capacity of 40GB, the Force Series F40 delivers the performance enthusiasts demand without breaking the bank.

Optimizing your Force Series F40 SSD

There are a few simple things you can do to get the most out of any SSD. Most importantly when using a smaller drive, you want to save on disk space wherever possible. Outlined below are the steps we took to achieve maximum results without impacting performance.

Hopefully you've read Gareth's excellent post on designing Professional Series™ Gold AX1200 already. No? Then click here before you continue.

If you HAVE read Gareth's post, then lets have a look at some of the glowing reviews that the AX1200 has received this last week.  

Jonny Guru has been one of the go-to websites for thorough reviews of power supplies for years. They were among the first to get their hands on the AX1200 and had nothing but positive things to say about it before giving it their highly coveted Recommended award.

"I got 94% efficiency out of this thing at more than one point, folks! Do you need any other reason to buy one? Let's face it - Corsair's new baby is made of awesome sauce, and I know you all want a taste. Stop reading my review and buy one, already!"

Don't bother asking for the awesome sauce recipe. It's a company secret and we're not sharing.  

Norwegian reviewsite Hardware.no also had a look at the AX1200.  We used Google to translate their review, and it sounds like they approve...

"Corsair AX 1200 W is without doubt a quality product from beginning to end. Except that I can seem extremely enthusiastic, I will simply say that they have done everything right."  

Finally, German site PC-Max had their say about the AX1200. Again, we translated this using Google.  

"Well, what is the end? It remains to say definitely that Corsair with the AX1200 has brought a good supply on the market. Processing are both inside and out very well and there is a pleasant extras such as seven-year guarantee or a fully modular cable management."  

Lets be honest, not everyone needs a 1200W power supply.  If you're wondering what your PC requires, you should use our PSU finder tool.  It'll recommend the perfect Corsair power supply for your system based on your specifications.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Jessie is out sick this week, so I am filling in on the weekly review front. There were a bunch of reviews this week, so let's jump in:  

The guys at Overclock3D took a look at our new Professional Series™ Gold AX1200 power supply, and gave us their coveted "Best In Class" award for Power Supplies rated from 1000-1500w:

"Just when it looked like the rest of the PSU market was finally catching up to the highly acclaimed HX series, Corsair have come out with yet another PSU range that moves the bar even further out of their sight. Without any shadow of doubt the AX1200 is by far the best PSU that has come through OC3D's labs to date, and the very fact that Corsair designed the unit from the ground up makes that achievement a whole lot more meaningful."    

Hexus reviewed our newest SSD, the Force Series™ F120 solid-state drive featuring the SandForce SF-1200 controller, and they gave it their "Hexus Performance" award:

"In view of the performance exhibited by the F120, especially in scenarios with heavy loading, the Corsair Force F120 is recommended to the power user who doesn't mind paying a little extra for top-notch performance."  

Over in Denmark the guys at iTrends reviewed the new Obsidian Series™ 700D full-tower case, and not only gave it a score of 100 out of 100 but they also awaded us thier "Editors Choice" (Please excuse the Google translation):

"Corsair Obsidian Series™ 700D prefer our iTrends character scale up to maximum 100 points for a cabinet to put themselves in the absolute class and the first designed for extreme users a solution that makes it easy to build the extremes without compromising on environment." 

In Italy we received yet another 700D review by the guys at Nexthardware, where they gave us five out of five stars (again this is a Google translation):

"Obsidian 700d can safely enter the top of a hypothetical ranking of the best cabinets for computers on the market. Material quality is simply excellent, as well as internal accessibility, maybe at best. We are still facing a great holiday, so compared to other products, some conclusions may seem obvious."  

That's it from me, enjoy your weekend!

I'll be headed up to beautiful Portland, OR for PDXLAN tomorrow morning. This will be our first in-person appearance that we've had at a LAN event in quite some time and I'm looking forward to interacting with everyone at the event. And when I say interacting, I mean headshotting. With a knife.

Not only will we be making an appearance, but we'll be sponsoring two build-off competitions where two lucky winners will come away with all of the components necessary to build their very own Corsair Dream PC including the recently announced Professional Series AX1200 PSU! I'll be getting plenty of photos and video from the show when I get back. Stay tuned!  

I only have a couple reviews to share with you this week. First is a review of the Obsidian Series™ 700D full-tower case at Tech Radar.

"For serious system builders looking to house their high-end systems in a perfectly functioning, subtle environment, it doesn't get much better than the 700D."  

We'll follow up those kind words with this TechGage review of the Nova Series V128 SSD. We'll take an Editor's Choice award to-go.

"These drives are so good to the point that a computer user would be unable to notice the difference in everyday tasks. Unless searching for the very best we can easily recommend the Corsair Nova Series SSDs, as long as they are found at a lower price than SandForce offerings such as the Corsair Force Series SSDs."  

So, that's really it for me this week. If you're at PDXLAN this weekend, I'll be seeing you soon! Have a great weekend.

Straight to the reviews today.

"Go big or go home" is the saying. We took it to heart with the Professional Series™ Gold AX1200 PSU and the guys at Overclockers Club expressed their appreciation for our efforts by giving us their coveted Editor's Choice award.

"The Corsair AX1200 power supply is one of the most efficient power supplies I have tested for OCC, but it gets better. The DC output voltage load regulation was almost perfect with all the rails maintaining their voltage within a 20mV window from zero to full load, whilst keeping ripple/noise levels well within the permitted levels."  

The Corsair Force Series™ F120 solid-state drive got the once over at PureOC, and they found the F120 maintains solid performance while offering better capacity over the competition. They liked it so much, they gave the F120 their Editor's Choice award.

"This SandForce-based Force [Series] F120 SSD has a considerably larger capacity than the competition but only a very small price premium. Corsair has decided to break away from the pack by trading off some data over-provisioning in exchange for larger data capacity. Smart move? You better believe it."  

I need to mention one more thing before I go enjoy this amazing weather. PDXLAN is a 500 person LAN event in Portland, OR. I'll be up there next weekend to check it out, play against some people in Battlefield Bad Company 2 (and probably get embarrassed), and host our system building competition. If you're going to be at the show, don't be afraid to come by and say hi! Have a great weekend everyone!

Looking at the rankings of top overclockers you will surely see HiCookie’s name at the top, he is currently ranked 1^st in the world on HwBot.org.  Combining HiCookie’s skill and knowledge with the best components, he was able to set the 3DMark Vantage world record to P67148 3DMarks.  In order to take the record he used four NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 480s on the Gigabyte X58A-UD9, which was powered by two Corsair AX1200 watt power supplies.

Setting a world record in 3DMark Vantage takes several key components.  You will need a 6.35 GHz Intel® Core™ i7-980X, four overclocked GTX480s, high memory frequency with tight timings, two powerful power supplies and lots of liquid nitrogen!  Of course you will also need overclocking skill, knowledge, hard work and dedication.