Corsair's range-topping AX1600i power supply gets some much-needed upgrades, including pin monitoring, proper GPU power sockets, and a reduction in size
Overview & Key Takeaways
The hammer blow of the price tag has yet to fall, though.
If there's one component in your beloved gaming PC that you should never cheap out on, it's the power supply unit, especially if you're using a high-end CPU and graphics card. Corsair's AX1600i has been the PSU of choice for many enthusiasts, but its design is somewhat lacking these days. Well, good news: it's been brought bang up-to-date with a whole host of much-needed changes.
Before I mention what Corsair has been showcasing at Computex, check out the current version of the AX1600i. Yes, it's frighteningly expensive, but you're getting an awful lot of PSU for the money. What you're not getting are things like dedicated 12V-2x6 sockets, a compact form factor, or a monitoring system that easily integrates with the rest of Corsair's software ecosystem.
Well, that's exactly what's new in this update. Instead of using its proprietary connectors or sockets that require an adapter cable for Nvidia graphics cards, you now get two 12V-2x6 sockets (the update to 12VPWR), meaning that you can now use any such cable with this PSU. Corsair will obviously tell you to use its cables, such as its ThermalProtect model, but the 12V-2x6 sockets will take any relevant cable.
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Directly related to that is a pin monitoring system that reports back to iCUE, and on that point, the new AX1600i has an iCUE Link hub and USB Type-C port built into it. I don't know if the PSU will actively control the current flow on 12V-2x6 pins that are overheating, but at the very least, you can enable single or multi-rail over-current protection, as well as get warnings about it via software.
To address the sheer bulk of the old design, Corsair has trimmed 30 mm off the length of the AX1600i so that it's now only 170 mm, and it's achieved this by using compact GaN components and applying its Shift PSU design, i.e. the power connectors are on the side of the PSU, not the end.
The result of these updates is the Corsair AX1600i Shift: a top-end power supply that will now fit into many mid-tower cases and far better support RTX graphics cards that have a penchant for all the power you can provide them.
Naturally, you'll want to know what all these changes have done to the already high price tag. That hammer blow has yet to fall, but I guess if you're already happy to spend many thousands of dollars on an RTX 5090, the additional cost of a new AX1600i perhaps won't matter so much.
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