Corsair CX650F Review – Too Good To Be Bronze

Introduction

Today we’re going to have a look at project “Mote Rosa” (aka CX650F) from Corsair. This is a unit verified at 80+ silver, but marketed at 80+ bronze. It shares many parts with the Vengeance Silver, which was discontinued around the time CX-F came out. Let’s have a look into this supposedly budget unit!

General Specifications

Power Specifications

Cables

Featuring dual EPS is a bit over the top for a 650w unit, but is often requested by users. I would’ve personally preferred to have 3 PCIe cables, two daisy-chained PCIe connectors are expected at this wattage. It has sufficient SATA power for the average gaming rig, but less so for something like a workstation or NAS. But this is expecting it to do something it’s not designed for.

Corsair also includes a cable for 3-pin ARGB and an iCUE cable to sync the PSU’s RGB with everything from your keyboard to your case. Makes total sense!

External

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(note: since I had to take the stickers off on the side to open the unit, these aren’t visible on the picture)

Finally! A hexagon exhaust again! I sometimes question if companies look weird at me for having something with this specific shape, but this is looking like a highly effective exhaust to me.

The unit would look nice in something like a Thermaltake Core P3 or Cooler Master Masterframe, but most cases will cover it. This might be the main reason this unit has been sold poorly compared to many other Corsair units.

Overall, I have nothing to complain here. It’s solid, it looks premium, looks effective… Its only real issue is that it might look a little too nice to cover up.

RGB

Protections

Most protections lead back to the protection IC, with the DC-DC controller being redundant for minor rail protection. A very solid setup given the price.

Parts Breakdown+Internal

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Now here is where the title comes in. Most of the parts used in this PSU are significantly better than should be expected at this price point and efficiency. A lot of budget 80+ units use a double forward DC-DC (or even group regulation), not an LLC resonant setup Corsair chose for here.

Its only real flaw would seem to be the low capacitance, but as seen in the next part of this review it surprisingly held up fine in hold-up time. The capacitor itself is branded Hitachi, but produced by Jianghai, who bought out Hitachi’s capacitor division a few years ago. Still, the choices regarding quality are solid here, and Corsair didn’t overspend on it by using Japanese brands. The rest of the capacitors are from Teapo, a well-regarded Taiwanese manufacturer.

The fan is branded by Corsair, but is like most of their other PSU fans produced by Hong Hua. It’s a custom designed fan with ARGB lights built in. The rifle bearing is expected to last beyond the 5-year warranty and should become a norm for budget PSUs. Many cheap units use sleeve bearing fans which wear out quicker and give the unit as a whole a shorter lifespan. On higher end units you’ll often see FDB/HDB or a variation on this, which offer an even higher lifespan, but this shouldn’t be expected of a unit like this.

Infineon FETs like these are normally seen in higher end 80+ gold units, this specific model has been found before in the likes of EVGA GM and FSP Hydro G Pro.

I did see a small difference between the sample Aris originally had in his review and report of the CX650F, but this is a minor improvement. The 12v MOSFETs used are a newer version of what it originally used. Nothing to complain about here.

Electrical Performance

The following results are by third party PSU lab Cybenetics. The results shown are based off the CX650F RGB report published on 14-07-2020.

Test Equipment

Overall (115v)

Overall (230v)

Efficiency (115v)

Efficiency (230v)

Voltage Regulation (115v)

Voltage Regulation (230v)

Ripple (115v)

Ripple (230v)

Fan Speed/Noise (115v)

Fan Speed/Noise (230v)

Hold-up Time (230v)

Conclusion

Sadly, this unit has sold poorly in the past few years, despite its great build quality and solid part choice, and will soon be taken out of the market. But until then, you can find them cheap at various retailers. I bought this unit myself for just fifty euros. If you have the chance and need a cheap unit with the build quality of the average midrange 80+ gold unit, I would highly recommend it. But if you’re reading this review once the unit is discontinued or you want to see alternatives to it, we left a few below.

Alternatives