CORSAIR CX Series CX500 500W 80 PLUS BRONZE Active PFC ATX12V & EPS12V Power Supply

Pros: Being 80% energy efficient, this 500 Watts Corsair power supply will be a good choice for most system builders. Fan noise problem noted by other reviewers have not been noticed by me, my sample of this PSU runs quiet in all positions. All cables were long enough for my system, and even furthest connection on motherboard (CPU Power 8-pins connector) reaches destination just fine with some slack. Corsair positions this PSU as a Intermediate Grade, however I'd position CX series as a General Purpose PSU as there is nothing advanced or innovative in this CX500 model.

Cons: At full load (simulated system stability test by AIDA64) one side panel of this power supply gets warm while power supply's cooling fan does not increase rotational speed (in my test cooling fan did not respond to increased internal temperature). Another significant limitation of this PSU is that it only have cables to power up single graphics card, and cannot be used with dual graphic cards configuration (SLI or CrossFire). Also I must note that under heavy load 12 Volts output dropped to 11.8 Volts. Evidently circuitry inside of PSU can be improved to keep output at 12.0 Volts until any load up to max allowable.

Overall Review: System that I used for testing this power supply:
Antec Three Hundred Case
Asrock Z97 Extreme3 Motherboard
EVGA GTX760 Graphics Card
Intel i7-4790K Processor running at 4.2Ghz
4x Corsair Vengeance 4GB Memory Sticks
Also I should note that at the time of writing this review there was newer version of this class PSU available at Newegg, listed as CX series 550 Watts. One egg was removed for failure of builtin cooling fan to respond to temperature increase and failure to adequately stabilize 12 Volts energy bus under heavy load.

Pros: Black
Sleaved Cables
Long Cables

Cons: First one was DOA

Overall Review: My current opinion of corsair now rides on the reliability and life of this powersupply.