After 7 months hard service my Corsair AX850 has finally died! Tried an alternative PSU in my system, my trusty old and loud Enermax Galaxy 850W and everything appears to work fine, so that's a reflief. The Corsair had been playing up recently so I'm glad it appears to have flat out failed. Now time to ride the rapids of a SCAN RMA! I plan to test the Corsair AX850 in my test rig to confirm it's completely borked but one question. From those who have processed PSU RMA with SCAN, is it really necessary to send all the modular cables back? If I can I'd rather get away with sending the Motherboard and CPU lead rather than tear down my entire system since the PSU leads are all cable tied and tidied away!
Can't comment with regards to the modular cables but I recently returned a Corsair CX430v2 to Scan for RMA. It was in my brother's system that I built for him and while he was just browsing the net, there was a 'pop' and both him and my dad said you could see smoke coming from the system. Took everything apart and had a look and as I suspected, it seemed to be coming from the PSU. You could even smell the familiar old electrical burning smell if you put your nose to the vent on the PSU and I even thought I could see burn marks around one of the caps. As I said, got in touch with Scan for RMA, they picked up the PSU promptly etc. only for me to receive an email the following day saying that they found the unit to be 'not faulty.' Obviously, I emailed back pleading my case and received a reply saying they would 'look into the matter' so as far as I know it's still being tested. How it can be found not faulty is beyond me - I certainly wouldn't be putting it back in any system I owned!
Disconnected the main PSU and had a peak through the fan grill. I can see an excess of the white goo you typically find around capacitors surrounding one of them to the extent that it appears to have been pushed away from the circuit board. Looks like a manufacturing fault to my eyes and after seeing that I wouldn't feel comfortable trying it in another system!
Don't send it to Scan! RMA it with Corsair directly, I've rma'd my hx650 twice now directly with them turn about is about 10 days if they're sending you a new replacement psu which they have done on both occasions. good luck.
Do you have to pay to send the PSU to Norway or wherever Corsair are based? I'm pretty sure I looked into this instead of RMA'ing to Scan, but it worked out pretty expensive! Could be wrong though!
Yes, a work colleague had to do this. And he had to pay postage to get it to the Netherlands. Obviously Corsair pay return postage.
Some companies want all the cables so they can check they haven't been modded, which is more common on modular supplies. If it's modded they will say you broke it somehow, just looking for an excuse not to replace it at their expense. On the shipping side I picked xfx because they had a UK RMA base, while being made by seasonic so thought should be good quality. It did die recently and I shipped it to them rather than scan and they specifically said not to send any extra cables back with it. So I now have two sets of modular cables as they sent some back with the new PSU.
Tbh I would contact scan first its only 6 months old so I reckon its down to them, I would phone them its much quicker that way.
I sent my HX1000 to the Netherlands last week - cost £40 but i got a brand new HX1050 back so cant complain. If you contact Scan they will probably pick it up for free and return it to Corsair for you, whereas if you contact Corsair they might make you pay postage. I did argue with Corsair about the £40 postage but supposedly because I was returning it under their extended warranty (>1 year standard warranty) the postage was my responsibility. As you are returning it withing 1 year of purchase you should not have to pay the return postage. Good luck! EDIT: I only sent the PSU back to Corsair - no cables or origonal packaging.
Forgot to add that if sending directly to Corsair they aren't bothered about modular cables, or at least have never mentioned me not sending them back when returning two PSU's recently. Not sure about Scan though.
Antec didn't want the cables from my Q850 I sent back. They told me to send the faulty one to them and they would send a new one out. They also refunded the postage I paid. Extremely quick turn around. Sent out on Monday had my new one on the Weds. Which means they sent out the new one before getting the faulty PSU. Thumbs up for them.
That's the only issue I had with returning my unit to Corsair. I worked it out to be around £40, but that's around the same cost as the CX 430 so I didn't see the point for me!
I'd personally RMA direct to Corsair but thats just me, there must be cheaper alternatives in posting to the Netherlands? Good luck.
The cheapest option is parcel force at £32 with no insurance or signature on arrival. For £40 you get insured up to £100 and it's tracked and signed for. Due to the weight and destination its not cheap!!!
Thanks for all the tips guys. I'm processing the RMA with SCAN since I can do very cheap UK postage, fully tracked. Asked specifically for clarification about the modular cables since it would be a pain to untie everything I've cable tied to my Fractal R3 case! I hope it's possible to just send the unit itself back to SCAN or at the very least include the Motherboard and CPU cable.
Just to let you know, when I contacted Scan about RMA'ing my PSU they arranged a next day collection of my PSU with DPD so I didn't end up paying a penny for it to be collected. I was very impressed with this, that's fantastic service IMO.
