Corsair will launch its 1,000-watt power supply by the end of this year and we had the privilege of taking a look on how this new unit will look like before everybody else, including pictures, a glimpse of the architecture it will use and its basic specs. Basically it will have true dual +12 V rails, with two independent transformers and two independent set of rectifiers for each transformer. Read on.

Please keep in mind that what we saw was a prototype, so the housing and stickers may be different on the final product.

As you can see on Figure 1, this power supply will use the same layout of current Corsair power supplies, with a mesh on its rear and a fan on its lower side. Its basic specs include active PFC and 80%+ efficiency.

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Figure 1: Corsair HX1000W power supply prototype.

It uses a modular cabling system, as you can see on Figure 2. As mentioned, this power supply has two independent secondaries and that is why you see connectors with different colors: the black connectors are connected to the first transformer and its own set of rectifiers, while the blue connectors are connected to the second transformer and its own set of rectifiers.

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Figure 2: Corsair HX1000W power supply prototype.

We personally think that using two independent transformers and independent rectifiers is the way to go with power supplies starting at 1,000 W – this is the same architecture used by Galaxy 1,000 W from Enermax, for instance. There are some power supplies around that have two transformers but their rectifiers are connected in parallel at the end, killing the advantages brought by dual transformer architecture. This is the case of TurboJet 1,100 W from Tagan. We highly recommend you to read our article on this model from Tagan because there we discuss the differences between a good dual-transformer design against a bad one.

On Figure 3 you can see the cables that are permanently attached to the power supply: main 20/24-pin motherboard plug, EPS12V plug and two 6/8-pin auxiliary PCI Express plugs. As you can see, this power supply does not have an ATX12V connector (4-pin auxiliary motherboard power connector), only an EPS12V one (8-pin auxiliary motherboard power connector). All wires are 18 AWG which is ok for the design used, because current for the motherboard and for the video cards come from different transformers – even though using 16 AWG would make a better impression.

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Figure 3: Power supply connectors.

On Figure 4 you can see the detail of one of the two auxiliary PCI Express power connectors. As you can see, you can transform it into an 8-pin connector by adding two extra wires. With very high-end video cards start using 8-pin power connectors (like Radeon HD 2900 XT) this is definitely a good addition.

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Figure 4: Auxiliary PCI Express power connector.

Even though Corsair paid to have its own UL number (E307858), from what we could see this power supply seems to be manufactured by CWT. Our suspicion is based on the amount of green tape inside this power supply (as we could see thru the power supply fan and mesh), a typical feature from units manufactured by CWT, like Thermaltake Toughpower 750 W. We, however, would need to disassemble this unit to be 100% sure, thing we didn’t do at this time.