Introduction

We would like to thank Corsair for supplying the review sample.



Corsair's HXi line is classified as their second-best, under the flagship AXi series. All HXi family members are made by Corsair's favorite OEM, Channel Well Technology, or CWT, and the new models not only feature Platinum efficiency and a fully modular cabling design, but also digital-monitoring functions. As it seems, Corsair is keen on bringing digital goodies to the general crowd, so they are now including these circuits in series other than their top-performing, pretty expensive AXi line. The original digital control- and monitoring design in Corsair products was implemented by Flextronics, but CWT obviously managed to familiarize itself with the technology because of Corsair's help, to a degree, since Corsair has by now collected a lot of experience with utilizing digital circuits in PSUs. Offering much higher efficiency levels and drastically better overall performance because such circuits are also used for control, not only as a bridge to connect analog circuits to the corresponding software, they will hopefully find their way into mid-level and, why not, mainstream units.

Today's review subject will be the HX1000i, the second-strongest of the line since the user's manual says there to be a 1.2 kW HXi PSU at the very top. This PSU is for enthusiasts who need top-notch performance and all the bells and whistles digital monitoring offers, without breaking the bank by buying an AXi unit. We should also note that the AXi units currently don't have a representative in the 1 kW category, which is considered pretty popular amongst enthusiasts. Corsair meant to breach the gap with a HXi unit; however, it would be great of them to release an AXi PSU with the same capacity in order to also offer highly demanding users a 1 kW unit.