Corsair RM Series 1000 W Review

Name: Corsair RM Series 1000 W
Brand: Corsair

crmaris

on Aug 27th, 2014,

in Power Supplies.

Manufacturer: Corsair

Performance Rating, Performance per Dollar, Noise & Efficiency Rating »

Ripple Measurements

You will see the ripple levels we measured on the RM1000's rails in the following table. The limits are, according to the ATX specification, 120 mV (+12V) and 50 mV (5V, 3.3V, and 5VSB).

Ripple Measurements - Corsair RM1000
Test	12 V	5 V	3.3 V	5VSB	Pass/Fail
10% Load	13.2 mV	6.9 mV	18.6 mV	6.4 mV	Pass
20% Load	17.4 mV	7.8 mV	21.5 mV	6.0 mV	Pass
30% Load	22.1 mV	8.8 mV	23.5 mV	6.6 mV	Pass
40% Load	24.4 mV	9.6 mV	25.9 mV	7.4 mV	Pass
50% Load	28.5 mV	10.6 mV	29.3 mV	8.0 mV	Pass
60% Load	33.9 mV	11.3 mV	30.6 mV	8.5 mV	Pass
70% Load	38.6 mV	11.0 mV	31.2 mV	9.4 mV	Pass
80% Load	47.8 mV	11.7 mV	34.8 mV	10.3 mV	Pass
90% Load	61.9 mV	12.7 mV	38.4 mV	12.2 mV	Pass
100% Load	90.9 mV	13.2 mV	48.1 mV	14.1 mV	Pass
110% Load	112.7 mV	14.2 mV	56.7 mV	15.8 mV	Fail
Crossload 1	18.1 mV	8.9 mV	18.9 mV	6.6 mV	Pass
Crossload 2	88.8 mV	13.2 mV	49.7 mV	14.1 mV	Pass

Ripple suppression is one of the most crucial aspects of a PSU, and we were surprised to find a Corsair/CWT implementation performing so badly in these tests. Ripple on +12V rail exceeded 90 mV, while it almost reached the already high limit the ATX spec sets on 3.3V. Something is obviously wrong with this unit's design, and CWT should look into it immediately. However, we should note that ripple with upward of 750-850 W on +12V—the most important rail of all—was much lower in our Crossload tests we perform at normal temperatures. Yet this is a 1 kW unit, so it should perform equally well throughout.

Ripple at Full Load

You can see the main rails' (+12V, 5V, 3.3V, and 5VSB) AC ripple and noise in the following oscilloscope screenshots. The bigger the fluctuations on the oscilloscope's screen, the bigger the ripple/noise. We set 0.01 V/Div (each vertical division/box equals 0.01 V) as the standard for all measurements.