 Welcome to my unboxing and first look at the Corsair AXI series AX860i. So I had the funniest conversation with the Russian the other day and he was asking me if he could borrow my H100i and I was like, oh what do you need it for? And he's like, oh well we got to do like a system build video and you know blah blah blah blah our shipment of eyes is late so I need to borrow one and I'm like, oh well how do you see then? And he kind of stared at me for, must have been a good like 30 seconds, like not even exaggerating like 30 seconds he just kind of stared at me and I was like, wait for it, wait for it. And then he never actually got it so that was what led me to believe that actually that joke probably wasn't very good. So here we go we got a power supply that's part of the AXI series. This we've already looked at the 1200i which we threw out of a moving vehicle if you want to check out that unboxing it was kind of fun. And this one we're not going to do the same thing but this is the first video we're doing in our new unboxing set which has been worked on very hard by yours truly. So what does the AXI series bring to the table that the AX series did not? So number one is full integration with Corsair Link. So Corsair Link is their hardware kit that they have produced for controlling and monitoring all kinds of cool things about your system. So if you load up to the nines with Corsair components including you know memory and coolers you can monitor all kinds of crazy stuff like the voltages on your power supply, the coolant temperature of your coolers, your fan rpms, you can control all kinds of cool stuff. So Corsair Link is pretty freaking sweet. Another thing that AXI upgrades over the previous generation product is it upgrades from AXI 80 plus gold certification for efficiency to 80 plus platinum. So that means it's basically 90 plus if you have a look at the curve here even at 115 volts that's 90 percent efficiency. Does not dip below. 80 plus platinum is as high as it gets right now for any kind of consumer level power supply. They've also they're using a digital signal processor for tighter voltage regulation and lower electrical ripple and noise which improves overall system stability and component reliability and they're guaranteeing this thing for seven years which is basically like saying it's not going to die. I mean think about the kind of computer you were running seven years ago. That was 2005 at the time of filming this video. So in 2005 I mean a 600 700 watt power supply was a lot and the standards for connecting them to things were completely different. So like they're basically saying for the useful life of this component it will not die. warranty guide to download the link software for the Corsair link dashboard monitor cool stuff. So remember guys you don't need the Corsair link hardware in order to take advantage of some of the aspects of link and I'll show you the pieces that it comes with. But if you do get the kit then obviously it gives you a more integrated overall experience. Corsair has been doing this since pretty much day one of their power supply business back when they had only the HX520 and HX620. I remember those days. I had myself a 520, Slick had a 620 in his oil cooled machine. I think he still has it. Is it still working? Yeah it's still working. Those are old power supplies now. No wonder Corsair doesn't mind warranting the thing for seven years. Alright included accessories we got a powered by Corsair badge. We got four screws for mounting it to your case and a whole whack load of black zip ties for cable managing. That combined with you know what they usually provide with their cases means you should have pretty much everything you need to cable manage your system if you go with a Corsair power supply and of course our case. Let's open up the velvet package here. Find out what's inside. You know at least it's not the 70s anymore so we don't have to worry about finding anything bad inside a velvet package. I mean velvet. Alright so the power supply itself. This is a short power supply unlike the 1200i which is quite long. So this will have just complete compatibility with pretty much any case that accepts an ATX power supply. It's got a 120 millimeter cooling fan. It should be noted however that that 120 millimeter fan only actually turns on at 20 percent load. So when your system is idle that is to say that it's consuming less than about 175 to 200, 225 whatever the math is. Once from the wall so less than about a quarter of its capacity from the wall and 90 percent 95 percent of systems out there will be below that at idle your fan will turn off which will mean you won't have to listen to your power supply until you actually turn on a game or some other kind of intensive application. That's awesome because it means that when your computer is not doing anything you don't have to listen to it doing stuff because it's not doing anything fans turn off. Awesome love to see that. They've got specs on the side here so because of you know the digitalness of it and all of that good stuff you can see it's capable of delivering the full 71.6 amps or 859.2 watts on the 12 volt rail so it's using converters actually it's using voltage step down components inside in order to actually achieve the 5 volt and 3.3 volts that it needs for other components inside your system. Here is the Corsair... Okay assuming we can open this give me a sec guys and we figured it out so this guy right here plugs into the power supply through a custom lead and then plugs into a USB header on your board and it should communicate with other Corsair link components as well so that's how the whole Corsair link thing works it actually interfaces directly with the hardware in your system through a software interface in the OS to allow you to control all kinds of cool stuff and I mean hey it's about time the power supply started getting a little bit smarter. So let's go ahead and hold on where is the thing yeah COM port it's got to be in here somewhere yeah there she is so this plugs into the COM port on the back of the power supply it's fully modular even including Corsair link you don't have to use it if you don't want to but that plugs in there and then that goes into the dongle here which plugs into USB and is sort of generally a good thing. Alright it has a self-test button which is sort of neat and a wide variety of different modular cable connectors so you can plug in up to four PCIe 6 pins and two CPU 8 pins plus a 24 pin plus six additional peripheral and SATA cables so let's have a look at what they've included in terms of modular cables. Corsair has really led the charge in terms of beautiful cabling so you can see they're using a very high quality sleeve here and on top of that you can't see any color through the sleeving because they're using all black wires for every single cable this should not be overlooked in terms of how difficult it is to achieve because power supply manufacturers don't want to deal with this they want to have everything color coded so that it's easy to manufacture so Corsair is paying extra to bring this kind of stuff to you guys so I hope you appreciate it. So there's your 24 pin we've also got where's my 8 pin 8 pin 8 pin do do do okay so that's a 6 plus no way hold on okay so that's a 6 plus 2 this guy right here there's your 8 pin let's have a look at the length of the 8 pin because this is a big factor if you're using a case that has a bottom mounted power supply such as Corsair's own 800D. That's a little bit on the short side if you want to get all the way to the top of an 800D you might need an extension cable although there are pretty neat sort of individually sleeved extension cables out there so let's go ahead and tuck that guy aside for now there is oh okay so that's a single 6 plus 2 interesting whereas this is a dual 6 plus 2 yes dual 6 plus 2 which is great if you're running two connectors to a single card here's another dual 6 plus 2 so that's a total of 5 so far here's a single 6 plus 2 so that's a total of 6 so far and then another CPU connector this is a 4 plus 4 so you can break it apart and use it as a 4 pin should you so desire so that's a really unique way of doing that so they've got two harnesses that each have two and then two more that each have one giving you the ability to not only run 6 pin PCIe connectors to video cards because really most people are only going to be running sort of 4 PCIe connectors max on their video cards in SLI or Crossfire but many components are starting to use PCIe connectors as auxiliary power even motherboards so that's why Corsair has included two that are optimized for graphics card plugging in and then two that are optimized for running somewhere else and powering something else should you so desire so very cool very smart way of doing that and it also again gives you the option to run things like triple PCIe connector video cards like there's a lightning 580 that uses 3 and stuff like that so great stuff good flexibility that they're giving you so we've got a 4 SATA connector harness we have another 4 SATA connector harness we have another 4 SATA connector harness and that is it for the 4 SATA connector harnesses so that's a total of 12 SATA drives that you can plug in natively plus remember you can always adapt Molex connectors because quite frankly who needs 8 Molex connectors anymore that would be ridiculous and then finally 2 Molex to floppy connectors included just in case you still have something that actually uses that archaic standard I think that pretty much covers it I don't think we've looked closely enough necessarily at the unit itself so you got your standard honeycomb mesh on the back got your on off switch you got your I mean Corsair are so good at this stuff so you've got your gorgeous sort of labels and stickers and branding and all that that looks amazing in your system everything's right side up no matter which way you turn it so it's not going to look stupid which I've seen a number of times in the past you can plug in pretty much every connector it comes with right out of the box actually you can okay so you have 2, 6 plus the 2 yeah you can plug in everything should you so desire so while that doesn't necessarily give you the flexibility of the approaches I've seen in the past on some other power supplies by the time you plug in everything to this power supply you've got 8 Molex's 12 SATA connectors 6 PCIe connectors 2 8 pins and a 24 pins so you're probably pretty much at the end of that 860 watt capacity thank you for checking out my unboxing and first look at the Corsair AX860i power supply don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for more unboxing reviews and other computer videos.