Juular

No, you can't use EVGA cable with a different PSU unless it's actually compatible, whip out a multimeter and see for yourself if it is.

Sheet metal pins ? Wow, that's garbage.

Corrosion happened.

Corsair SF

Same price ? CX-M.

Will it work ? Maybe. Is it appropriate ? No, because this thing is ancient

That wasn't a usual Seasonic 12V v-sense noise issue then. Probably tripped UVP due to bad contact in one of the cables or the usage of 18AWG wires by Seasonic which means higher voltage drop under load. Does the issue reappear if you connect the GPU with a pig-tail cable back ?

That's 2019 revision, you've probably got 2021 one which comes with two PCIe cables because nVidia told Corsair that RTX3xxx GPUs would use EPS cables for the adapter to 12-pin. Speaking of your question, it is safe, because in contrast with most other PSUs, Corsair uses 16AWG wires for their cables, they can withstand this load, if it's not mining without undervolting anyway.

Does your buddy have a multimeter ? If not, tell him to buy one, it only needs to have a continuity/voltage test, they're cheap, or just use two pieces of wire and a battery. Then he sticks a positive lead into pin 1 on PSU side, and goes through the pins on the load side of the cable with the negative lead. Writes down the pins he had a signal with, moves the positive lead to pin 2 on PSU side of the cable and repeats the procedure until he maps through all the pins and repeats this for all the needed cables. Bam ! You now have a pinout. If a pin on PSU side has a signal going to two or more pins on the load-side that means that either there's a split, i think mostly happens with PCIe cables, or he have mistaken. If a pin on the load side has a signal going through to two or more pins on PSU side then it probably a pin for one of the power rails (12V, 5V, 3.3V) with an auxillary V-sense pin, or again, he have mistaken. The v-sense wire would be thinner on the stock cables and so, with custom cables you can use a thinner gauge wire too. Or otherwise, tell him to trace the wires going from pin to pin visually to see which wires are thinner and/or being split.

You have a PSU on hand ? Determine the pinout then.

Corsair uses multiple OEMs, in case you haven't caught it, the examples Jon have been talking above are actually all real examples from the experience of working with those OEMs. Corsair engineers (ones that work with PSUs anyway, idk about other departments) and Jon himself babysit all OEMs they work with, including Seasonic, but not anymore it seems, since AX is discontinued, partly due to the fact that Corsair/Jon manages to build better products with CWT and Great Wall. So back to the 'OEM has more control than the brand' you keep repeating, again, that may be the case with some brands like EVGA, go read Puget Systems reliability report, Super Flower's own PSUs somehow have lower failure rate than the same PSUs but rebranded by EVGA, i guess because all EVGA cares about is profit so they've asked Super Flower to tone down some stuff and make it cheaper. But Corsair is the exception, they tell OEMs exactly what forms of QC they should perform, generally more robust than some OEMs are doing for the products they sell under their own brand, and Corsair also has people on site to control that. Then there are engineers testing received products pre-production and in-production, with quite robust testing programs too (i had a chance to look at Corsair Chroma report, it's looooong, not the usual stuff you'll get from the stock Chroma). For example, they also test the PSUs they rate for 50°C at 55°C, while Seasonic in contrast only rates their PSUs at 40°C, even super expensive Prime TX, maybe because making sure their stuff doesn't blow up at 50°C would've been too much work. Prime TX apparently doesn't still, since Corsair AX was basically that with some rather minor changes (because Seasonic refused to do anything major) and it is rated for 50°C, but you see where it's going. OEMs would only have better control if the brand outsourcing their products doesn't care. So in the end it's not about whether the PSU is oursourced or not, it's made by an OEM anyway by definition, and whether it's then being rebranded or not is irrelevant to it's quality. What's relevant is whether the OEM and/or the brand which outsources their products have actually made sure that it's a good product or not. I wish more brands were talking about what they're doing with geeks like us, but sadly Jon is basically the only one who does, that puts some respect in Corsair PSUs even without all the actual work he does to make sure Corsair has good PSUs. And don't get me wrong, Corsair had some bad PSUs (most of which pre-Jon's involvement), and very well could still have in the future, people make mistakes and burn out, so i don't have illusions that everything he does is perfect, and that Corsair would always be good by default. But even if the two PSUs in question (Corsair CX-F and Seasonic Core) both haven't had any reviews on them, i would've still picked CX-F because i know Jon would make sure that it's a good product, but since CX-F also actually has professional detailed reviews on it (by Aris, [1] [2] [3]), and Seasonic Core doesn't - that's not even a question.

That could definitely be the case, but that doesn't make what he said invalid. Seasonic is a small OEM in comparison and they actually have less control over their production because they outsource more things what other OEMs don't. And Corsair doing their own layer of QA/QC on top, regardless of the OEM of their products means that they have more control over their products than brands that just use outsourced off-the-shelf solutions like Antec, EVGA, Phanteks etc. And the fact that despite Seasonic are always ready to throw some Prime Titaniums to random YT'ers for 'reviews', there are very few reviews on their budget offerings, not to mention proper ones - also still stands.

What kind of load ?

Aris Mpitzopoulos reviews at Hardware Busters, Tom's Hardware, Techpowerup. Generally, if there's no review from him then that model is not a good buy. But there are some other worthy enough reviewers to point at least some picture in the absence of ones from Aris. They're all listed in teh spreadsheet for the PSU tier list.

Corsair in contrast with most other brands who outsource stuff actually does. They have people both in RnD, including JonnyGURU, creating specs for the OEM and evaluating platforms they get, and in the factory itself to oversee the manufacturing process. Some other brands like be quiet! and probably Silverstone to some degree do too. EVGA and Thermaltake don't. Seasonic doesn't seem to care too much about stuff they outsource either (looking at you S12III/A12), and even if B12/G12 (which they outsource too) isn't that bad as it looks, there are still zero reviews on it which says something about their confidence in it. So whether the brand outsources their products or not doesn't matter in the slightest, if anything, if you have your own QA/QC on top of what the OEM is doing that only makes things better, and if you manufacture your own stuff that doesn't mean that you necessarily have 100% control over it's QC if you didn't make sure to do so. So in the end it's about the quality of each separate product itself, not the brand name or whether it's outsourced or not. Sure, and Corsair PSUs there are better than Seasonic offerings, hell, even Seasonic-made EVGA G6 is better than expensive ass Prime TX. Speaking of Corsair CX-F vs Seasonic Core, there are again, zero reviews on the latter in contrast with the former. Even if Core actually ends up being a better PSU, unless it's proven by reviews, i'd rather get a 'good enough' option which was well reviewed than to gamble on the most important part of the PC.

It works ? You don't need a new PSU ? Then no.

Components that protect the equipment from surges are sacrificial (they get damaged by the spikes and would eventually fail), so to have a continuous protection against frequent spikes you gotta have a lot of them. While in a PSU there's typically just a single relatively low energy MOV. I'm not sure why but i'm gonna assume due to space constrains. Whereas in any decent dedicated surge protector there would be at least a few of those, usually with higher energy capacity, and in some also a different type of surge protection component - GDT. So if you have frequent surges and want continuous protection it would always be a good idea to get a surge protector even if the PSU has some surge protection itself too.

For higher transient capability the GPU that would actually need 600W - yes, probably, since 'conventional' pre-ATX3.0 PSUs don't have nearly enough capacitance to deal with transient like that with the probable exception of some 1.3-1.6kW designs. But it's too early to say anything concrete, we'll see when those GPU actually come.

PSU manufacturers were nowhere near this, there are no PSU manufacturers in the PCI-SIG, they were given the spec post factum, GPU designers - sure, both AMD and nVidia are there, but they're not really GPU manufacturers either, as in the whole product, for customer market at least. Regardless, i don't really see the use of this 4-pin appendix in the way it's implemented either, if you're going out your way to make a specification for something new then a true digital interface would've made way more sense IMO too, it's not like we're living in 1950's, it can be made reliably and server PSU already have it. Yeah, thing is, you don't need this connector PSU-side. A cable with 2/3x8-pin on one side and 12VHPWR on another will do just fine. Neither you need the 4-pin part because it's a simple short to ground. The PSU would've had control over this if there would've been an interface, there isn't. It's a passive in-cable physical config merely telling that the GPU is 'good to go'.

Can you get a photo of PSU internals through the fan or exhaust grilles ? Basically whether it looks like this : Or this :

So GF1 ? How old it is ? Also, answer Jon's question.

Absolutely. They use CWT an an OEM. Decent to very good platforms. Yes, the warranty is rather short but it's a function of the price/margins, not quality. In addition to what's available now they seem to be preparing another model based on CWT CTT platform which should be (unless they/CWT fuck something up) up there on par or very close to Corsair HX, i.e better than anything Seasonic for example. But we'll see if that's the case when reviews come out. Next time try to Ctrl-F the brand you're sweeping under the rug when linking the tier list it's listed on at the top positions (and was there from the start).

Choose two. There are good and cheap 80+ Gold PSUs but they're very innumerous. It also depends on the definition of cheap.

Still unclear. So the PC shuts down and refuses start back neither automatically nor manually, until you cycle the PSU switch off and on ? What PSU is that ? Grand RGB Gold ?

Nope, it's Jon.