We are Corsair - a computer hardware company. Ask Us Almost Anything.

I will not answer questions about Rampart.

1 horse sized duck.

This guy knows how to deal with Reddit.

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Wait, you forgot to ask for a pic with a shoe on OP's head.

Challenge Accepted.

Wait... Does that mean that he's a regular redditor?

There are a probably 10 or more that are regulars here.

George, do you think that Fred Flintstone would have ordered such a huge order of ribs if he'd known that it would tip the car over?

Absolutely. Ribs are delicious, and the car seemingly suffered no ill effects.

How do I computer.

Computer is to has as can be more like.

Hey guys we got some discounts for you! Use Discount Code: REDDIT for 10% off Cases and Cooling at the Corsair.com webstore. Discount gets applied at checkout. Offer is good for today and tomorrow.

Hey guys I am Jake Crimmins, I’ve been with Corsair for 3 years now and I am a Technical Marketing Specialist. I’ve been an enthusiast for the past 14 years and have been doing extreme overclocking for the past 11. Unlike George I will only answer questions about Rampart.

Hello Jake. What is Rampart?

My new movie go see it!

Still replying 4 hrs later... Hardcore!

Not hardcore Rampart!

I swear this is a true story. I went to a high school in LA and you crashed our prom after party (Universal Hilton). You ended up taking the virginity of a girl named Roseanna. You didn't call her afterwards. She cried a lot. Do you remember any of this and can confirm or have you been so knee deep in hollywood pooty for so long that this qualifies as a mere blip?

She never gave me her number. I was pretty bummed

No, I'm Corsair!

Redditor for 1 year this guy checks out! Have an upvote

Are there any plans in development for closed loop water cooler for both CPU and GPU in the same loop?

I can't comment on unannounced products, but there are lots of inherent issues with this. One of which is that you'd need a pretty significant radiator to cool both a CPU and GPU, as a GTX 680 puts out around 180-200 watts of heat, or 50-100% more than the CPU does.

Not to mention all the challenges in the different mounting brackets and such.

EDIT - since Mr. Polite below me has called me out, I define "significant radiator" as more than a thin, 240mm rad with push-only fans.

Cooling a 120W CPU and a 180W GPU, neither of which is overclocked, is feasible but not recommended. Overclock either one and you up that heat output up to 50-75%. That's just unwise.

What do you think of people attaching their Hxx CLC to their GPU?

It can be very beneficial to GPU temps especially on a card like the 480. Last year I did a blog post on how to mod your H70 to fit a GeForce GTX480.

http://www.corsair.com/blog/using-a-hydro-series-h70-on-a-nvidia-geforce-gtx480/

Hey George (et al), thanks for doing the AMA.

• Anything new or exciting going on in the cases front that you could tell us about? Have you guys considered a case with integrated liquid cooling?

• How much has the increase in video card heat output changed case design in recent years? How much of a challenge is it to plan for the size of modern GPUs?

• How do you like working with Corsair? What's your professional background in, and how did you land the gig?

1 - We just announced the 900D, which is pretty awesome. There are always new and interesting things in the case market, but I can't talk about roadmap stuff until it's closer to launch. We're looking very closely at form factors and usability.

2 - A lot actually. Over the last 3 years, with SLI and Crossfire being much more effective and Eyefinity and multi-monitor gaming picking up significantly, we've seen high-end rigs put out a lot more heat, and GPU coolers tend to just shove that heat right into the case. It's a big challenge to design an airflow path that's efficient for both blower style and radial style GPU coolers.

3 - I love it. I had no professional background aside from being an overclocker/builder when I got hired, but since then I earned an Advertising Degree. I started in the lab as a memory tester. "This stick goes 271 Mhz. This stick goes 273 Mhz. This stick goes 280 Mhz." etc. Worked my way through and upwards a bit.

The way you describe the lab work sounds a little boring really. I'm studying electrical engineering and quite a bit of electronics. Is there anything more challenging going on at corsair or is it all a bit like that?

I can't answer your question in terms of Corsair, but I can tell you that you will not be a memory tester as an engineer. You do not need an engineering degree to do this.

Yeah, hopefully not. I was hired as an Applications Technician, moved up to Apps Specialist, and then to Product Manager.

Now I'm Le Grande Poobah.

Since George answered the first two I will reply to the third. I love working at Corsair it has been one a great experience. You will find that most of the employees have been here for 5+ years. That is just something that is unheard of in this industry. I started out just like you guys an enthusiast who got obsessed with overclocking. Eventually got into extreme overclocking and landed a job at a GPU/Motherboard manufacturer. I left there after a few years and came to Corsair.

Why are the cables for my speakers so short?

You're going to have to be more specific. Which speakers?

I believe he is referring to the SP2500, and I too would like to know this.

Go ahead and send me a message with your shipping info and I will get you a set of the 10 foot cables.

What is your Personal Computer like? Spec-wise, that is.

My home desktop is a Z77 with a 3770K, 16 GB of Dominator Platinum, an AX760i, and a GTX 680. Neutron 480, and an H100 as well. I rock a prototype unannounced keyboard and an M65 mouse.

My main gaming rig is:

CPU: Intel Core i7 3960x Motherboard: ASUS P9X79 DELUXE GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 Case: Corsair Obsidian 550D PSU: Corsair AX850 SSD: Corsair Neutron GTX 240 Memory: 32GB Corsair Dominator Platinum Cooler: Corsair H100

I think your ram is worth more than my system

Memory is pretty cheap these days

Am I looking at the wrong thing, or is a 16GB stick of that RAM really $760?

That kit is very special, it is really that price because it is the fastest ram you can buy. It is a 16GB kit 4x4GB of 2800MHz which only ultra enthusiasts and overclockers use. The kit is that expensive because less than 1% of ICs can actually do that speed. There are 64 individual memory ICs in that kit at meaning in order to get those 64 ICs we needed to test 6,400+ memory ICs to build one kit. They are pretty much hand made except for the placing of components on the PCB.

Do you guys get a massive discount on Corsair products? and do you currently have any job openings, because I could use an SSD

Yep. Employee purchase is nice. Also, sometimes we have "clean out the lab days" where you go through the dozens of old motherboards, processors, cases, power supplies, etc, and pick stuff you want to take home.

I've built a few systems out of those parts. Some of them are pretty good for free.

We get a pretty good discount on products. I think we have a few openings right now. http://www.corsair.com/us/company/careers

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1 - Mini ITX is a strange beast and we're still at the front edge of its popularity. Intel has some new ideas this year with a variant of it, so we'll see how it goes. Personally I like Mini ITX but a lot of the Mini ITX cases are basically huge. For real innovation to occur we need Mini ITX form factor PSUs and GPUs. Basically a 1/2 scale ATX spec. Low-profile gaming GPUs and 400-500W high-efficiency PSUs in small form factors. Right now, you're limited to power bricks or SFX-style PSUs of questionable quality.

2 - Yes, we've looked into this before.

3 - Nope. Air coolers are much less expensive than water coolers, so you'll always have stuff like the CM Hyper 212 out there. The high-end aircoolers also have their place, but I think that customers are voting with their dollars that they'd rather add a bit of noise for an H100i than deal with a huge 3lb hunk of aluminum and copper that takes up half the inside of their case. I know the hardcore guys don't like our products and vote for the D14 or the Phanteks stuff instead, but I think the sales speak for themselves. People want access to their RAM, 8-pin CPU power socket, top and rear fans, etc, without having to remove their cooler.

We want a 5.1 audio system from Corsair! Thoughts?

You're a dying breed. Godspeed, brother.

Computer speakers are terrible. Best bet is to buy regular HT speakers and a receiver and hook a HTPC to the receiver.

This is what I mean. Computer speaker guys who want 5.1 are rare. Most people interested in 5.1 go with aftermarket bookshelf or home theater setups.

What breed of cats do you like the most?

Thundercats.

Where do you guys see yourselves with the announcement of Steam boxes and all sorts of new smaller form factors? What's the direction for Corsair over the next 5 years?

Steam Box is very interesting, we've got our eye on how it will shake down. I think it could be a big shake-up in the console industry if managed right.

I've got an artesian well on my property & the water pressure is lousy. Any suggestions?

Just purchase a 900D and place it near the well. This will create a gravitational field strong enough to increase water pressure substantially.

What design software do you use while engineering new PC cases?

Depends, we use a lot of Solidworks, but we also use some other CAD programs. I honestly don't know the names of all of them because I'm the marketing/idea guy, the actual engineers do the hard work.

Recently purchased a keyboard, mouse, and headset from you guys really am enjoying them. Any plans on getting into any other part of the computer hardware department? Any new exciting products that we should be on the look out for ?

Can't commnet on unnanounced parts man. Sorry.

does seasonic in fact make corsair's psus? (google says yes, but that may be outdated or flat-out wrong.)

Seasonic is one of our manufacturers. CWT and Flex and Chicony are the others.

All products are modified from the "standard" versions, if they exist. Flex doesn't sell desktop PSUs so our designs are completely custom. Same with Chicony. Seasonic and CWT designs are heavily modified, for example, we may go from a single-layer PCB to a four or six layer, we may beef up capacitors or swap out fans to ensure the longer lifespan and performance characteristics we require.

Hey George, thanks for doing this! :) Sooo when is the 900D coming out, and what will the pricing be like?

Late february , $350.

MSRP is 349.99 and it should be available late February.

There are two types of people.

Jake must be in Marketing.

Haha, Jake is the engineer/test guy and I'm the marketing guy actually.

Quite a while ago I posted on the Corsair forums suggesting that you should start making mouse pads. I mentioned I had a lot of Corsair peripherals and my Razer mouse pad was spoiling it. A lot of people came into the thread and agreed with me.

For bragging rights, can you tell me if that post influenced the outcome that was you starting to offer mouse pads?

Yes

Sure. Why not?

Actually we had mousepads in development during the initial stage of mouse/keyboard development, they were just not as high a priority.

Why was the h100 noise problem handled so badly? I lost a lot of confidence in corsair after that fiasco.

It took us a very long time to duplicate it, and then even longer to do root cause analysis. The issue was actually not simple to fix. It was easy to bandage with a step-down resistor to slow pump speeds, but that significantly affected performance, and wasn't a fix. So the actual fix took a while.

You're right though, we could have handled that way better. We learned a lot about it and our QC team put all sorts of new procedures in place to make sure it doesn't happen again.

Is it true that Jake Crimmins is actually Peter Griffin?

I can confirm this is true.

I can confirm as well

What type of skills should a typical employee have?? Computer/electrical engineering background? You guys make the only power supplies I can trust! Thanks.

We have lots of different groups - technical marketing, technical support, engineering, etc.

The most important facet you need to have are passion and willingness to learn new things. If you care about doing a good job and you want to learn more, you're like 2/3 of the way to being an awesome hire, regardless of your experience level or pay grade.

You are handed a 900D and an unlimited budget, what do you put inside?

Street tacos. Carnitas.

George, just bought an H60 2nd generation Hydro cooler like 2 minutes ago lol, I have 650D case, what would you recommend me? to use only the fan that comes with the cooler, or use the one that came with my case as well in a push/pull config?

Put the cooler fan as push and the case fan as pull.

How long does testing go for certain products you guys develop, such as cooling units, and power supplies? Is it a long process or pretty much just trial and error until it becomes stable?

• How do you see the computer industry going in the future? It seems like major name brands, perhaps even your company who are producing products that we have no current need for because our video games don't require it. This leads into another question: How do you base what your next product is going to be? Is it just from "oh time for a new upgrade?" to "hey this cooling unit will work perfectly with "X" processor. Or perhaps a new video game is coming out that may require a better product.

Thank you for all you do at Corsair, I own a Power Supply from you guys and got excellent support for it. =)

Depends. A new PSU takes around a year to develop and fully test through the various engineering verification, design verification, etc. Some of the things are more hard science-based - PSUs, you know pretty well what changing a transformer or addinga capacitor will do.

With cases there's a lot of trial and error in the cooling and noise level stuff, and even layout and buildability. Until you get it put together you never REALLY know how well it'll work.

As for the future of the industry, I think consoles have hurt the PC gaming and hardware industry over the past few years because PC games have been "dumbed down" graphically so that they could be easily ported to lower-powered devices like the Xbox 360 or PS3. However, I think that's changing, and I think that the "glorious PC gaming master-race" or whatever yahtzee called us will see a resurgence. I also think the Steam Box / Big Picture thing is a real threat to the way that consoles have operated.

For us, we work to make sure our hardware is compatible with numerous new technologies from our partners - if Asus has a new motherboard form factor, we put the screw holes on the motherboard tray in our case. If Intel has a new socket, we update the CPU coolers to be compatible. That sort of thing.

Our goal for every product is to make it better. The H100i improves on the H100 in just about every way, for example.

Will there be any other additions to the Vengeance series of cases and if so when? I just got a white one for Christmas and I fucking love it! Edit: Also, if you designed it, you are a genius.

What is Linus like in real life?

What is the most prominent/anticipated piece of technology that you are excited for most in 2013?

What are the specs of your personal pc?

1 - Can't comment on unnanounced parts. 2 - He's freakishly handsome and smells fantastic. 3 - Haswell. 4 - posted elsewhere.

Is there any advantage to using corsair memory or does it just look cool?

Also I've had a terrible time with MMO/RTS mice. I had 3 bad experiences with the Razer Naga (I really liked the naga hex but like all my other Razer hardware it died far too early of a death and Razer synapse is a piece of garbage). Currently I am using a logitech g600 (which at least like other logitech hardware doesn't break after 4 weeks of use) but am not really happy about the ergonomics. Do you think I should give your m95 a chance or will it just end in frustration? Is there any showroom or anywhere I can put my hand on the M95 and see if I like it?

Corsair Memory looks cool, is guaranteed to overclock, and we do pretty rigorous quality testing. But even overclocked memory won't make your games noticeably faster. Games aren't usually bottlenecked by system ram speeds.

I don't know where you're located so I can't say anything about the M95 to check it locally. It's physically the same as the M90 on the outside. I think they're available at Fry's and Microcenter in the US.

Does Corsair have any use for a web designer/developer? I want to work for you guys. :(

Man, this is a loaded question.

Do you think cases that work on the Solar Chimney principle, except of course that the draft is created by heat pipes transporting the CPU/GPU heat to the chimney walls, would be feasible commercially?

That link is the first I've heard about it, but I think it may require a lot more volume than a PC case is able to provide. And a good distance between the "cool" and "warm" segments.

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The ones in the Corsair Link Lighting Node

http://www.corsair.com/en/corsair-link/corsair-link-kits/corsair-link-cooling-node-552.html

Have the 3M adhesive backing, but I haven't used them long enough in my personal system to know for sure if they come loose over time. They're very low profile though, and can be controlled even without the rest of the Corsair Link kit.

How often do you see an idea on somebody else's case, and wish that you had thought of it first?

Hah! Oddly, these days, not as often. Far more often I see an idea on somebody else's case and say "Wow, that's insane. I can't imagine why that makes any sense at all." and then we buy the case and play with it and it breaks or doesn't work or is a pain in the ass to use and offers no benefit.

There are a LOT of gimmicks in the case market.

I do occasionally see designs that I think look great - I think the Phantom 630 that NZXT released this week is the best looking of the bunch, in my opinion. I really like the look of the old Silverstone TJ09 and TJ07. So from an aesthetic viewpoint, I see stuff I like often, but rarely do I see it on features.

Once in a while, but not often.

Hey George,

Are there any plans to make a completely connected system using i-series parts? Maybe an i-series case? or other parts that can all be connected and controlled from the Corsair link software? Just a thought :P

The end goal of Corsair Link is to give you complete software control of every Corsair component in your PC, and modification of noise and cooling and lighting settings based on user preference.

It takes a while but anything is on the table.

How do you feel about corsairs not being in StarCraft II?

I'm hurt, man. I thought we had something there, Blizzard.

Big fan of all of the Corsair line, in fact, the only thing I don't have that is Corsair that you actually make is the Obsidian 800D case I have been eyeing. Any new, crazy manufacturing stuff you can tell us about?

Well, the 900D. So I'd move your eyes over that way. :)