It sounds amazing, but until now there was no way to get a CORSAIR digital source to switch between monorail and multirail mode of operation. But there are several factors that lead an industry leading brand like CORSAIR to change and improve in everything that surrounds its products. And there is nothing more important for the brand than its management software, which we all know and which now benefits from a new version, completely redesigned.
CORSAIR activates the control option to choose the operating mode of your sources
As expected, many of us applauded the new iCUE software, and while it could be improved in some ways, it is undoubtedly a step forward in many others. It is not that CORSAIR has decided to allow features to its products in a trivial way, far from it, we are talking about an update more than thoughtful, worked and designed for all users of the brand, where simplicity and grouping of characteristics predominate. .
But why activate monorail mode on your power supplies while now taking advantage of the release of the new iCUE? Well, basically he had to be forced to do that, and while he hasn’t made public the reasons for this change, the reality is that with the entry of the new gaming GPUs NVIDIA RTX 3000, many users have encountered problems.
When a user purchases a policy AXi, HXi or RMi you are looking for the best in terms of price and performance, especially as we move upmarket. For this reason and considering the price of the sources, currently they usually last for many years, the warranties are extended and with that there is usually no idea of short term change.
The problems of multirail and RTX 3000 with its 12-pin connector
Because of this, the vast majority of users already have some time with their power supplies, which, although not mentioned, ends up degrading the power distribution ports, called rails. Most of the CORSAIR i-series sources, in addition to being digital, incorporate multirails, divided into several stages which can be partially configured and limited to amps so as not to break them.
The RTX 3000 has shown that a multi-rail source with some usage and charging time can have supply delivery issues with these new GPUs. The problem is logically the high consumption of NVIDIA products and its partners, where it is increasingly difficult to deliver such power with optimal response time and with the greatest efficiency.
When a rail is highly stressed and under heavy load, it ends up degrading its performance, which means that during the installation of a RTX 3000, especially the high end (RTX 3090), let’s find sporadic reboots that can give a headache.
For this reason, CORSAIR has just activated said monorail mode to divert all possible amps on a single channel, yes, up to 40 amps if we limit them by OCP. And we’re talking about 480 watts per rail, so that should be more than enough even with the limitation.
Steps to follow to activate monorail mode with iCUE on CORSAIR i Series sources
Obviously, we must have one of the source series mentioned above, which means that we will have to have connected the built-in 9 pin USB 2.0 cable to our motherboard. After that we will need to download the latest version of iCUE from the CORSAIR website.
The setting is enabled from version 4.10.273, so we will need this version or higher to be able to enable it. Once downloaded, we will logically have to install it, where the last installation step will be to restart the PC, which we will do to complete the process.
After that and in Windows, we will logically open our CORSAIR iCUE, where we will see all the devices available for our computer. Among them must be our power supply, because iCUE itself installs all component drivers, so it must be recognized as such.
If it does not detect it, we recommend that you download programs like Revouninstaller and from there uninstall iCUE and then remove any remaining entry from the program. After that, you will have to repeat the iCUE installation steps, where when you restart and go back to Windows, everything should work normally.
We assume that we are already seeing the source in the main iCUE panel, so we are accessing it as shown in the image above.
Once inside, we will click on the left side on the device configuration and another smaller window will open in the center. By default, CORSAIR Series i fonts are configured for multirail mode, so what we’ll see is normal.
As we can see, each rail can be configured with a maximum of 40 amps, where exceed those 480 watts the protection will jump and we will restart the PC or the equipment will shut down, depending on the excess.
As can be seen in the image above, we have a second mode which is the result of this article, since we want to configure the power supply in OCP monorail mode. We will just have to click here and the following window will appear directly.
Once we see them, we will know that the source has changed the way it delivers power and that the monorail mode is fully active. So no NVIDIA RTX 3000 should have any issues with these fonts, including versions Founders Edition which are the ones that include the 12 pin connector.
However, this is not a panacea, as some sources have been working this way for a long time, so we may need to change the PCIe port of the cable at the source itself.
