Corsair VX450W 450W Power Supply

Design and Features

Corsair’s VX450W is bundled in a noticeably smaller box in comparison to their previous HX series. The green-tinted cardboard box contains the power supply, a power cable, a small quantity of zip-ties, mounting screws, and a nice cloth bag which keeps the unit free from scratches. All in all, it’s a very nice little package which Corsair has put together with this product.

Shipping Box - Front

Shipping Box - Back

The power supply itself features the same matte “gunmetal” black finish which was used in the prior HX series. The power supply is all business, sporting an attractive design which will appeal to the minimalist crowd. The unit is based off a standard ATX design and is quite short (depth wise), so it can be used in the vast majority of cases on the market today. Two neon green-tinted stickers are attached to the power supply, sorting the model number and the specifications of the unit.

Left Angle - Top

Right Angle - Top

The rear of the unit features a honeycomb patterned grille, which allows for maximum airflow out of the unit with little air resistance. This works in conjunction with the VX450W’s internal fan to produce very little noise during operation. The back grille features a simple on-off switch and a US–style three prong AC power connector.

The VX450W’s cooling is taken care of by a single 120mm cooling fan, which is mounted internally on the bottom of the power supply, designed to intake airflow from the inside of the chassis and exhaust air outside of the rear grille. The 120mm cooling fan is a 0.33A double ball-bearing fan from ADDA, which we found to be exceptionally quiet under all scenarios. Even with a high-wattage system configuration (overclocked quad-core GPU, dual 10K RPM RAID hard disks, 8800-series graphics card), we never heard the noise level of the fan rise once. Never.   

Corsair claims that the fan speed won’t increase until load levels of 400+ watts are reached. This basically means that for the majority of system configuration, you’ll be running at a very low noise level all the time. It’s somewhat off putting, how quiet this power supply is. With no LED lights and this quiet design, it’s hard to tell if the unit is actually on and running, without directly looking and seeing if the fan is spinning.

120mm Cooling Fan Shown

Cable Bundle

The biggest change between the Corsair HX and VX lineups is that the VX series does not boast a modular cable design. Modular cables allow you to unplug and store un-used cables, which allows internal system wiring to be cleaner. However, modular cable systems do increase overall price tags, and most mid-range users will not notice the benefits of such a system. We find modular cable systems to be a desirable feature, so we’re sad to see it go, especially when units like the Antec Neo HE have already proven that low-cost power supplies with modular cabling can exist and sell well.