PSA for users outside Korea: DO NOT BUY CORENSI PSUS!

This PSU (CORENSI) is notorious for exploding in spectacular fashion.

https://namu.wiki/w/Cheongung_(power supply)

It's indicated with protuding heatsinks with either blue or red or green color.

https://www.bukalapak.com/p/komputer/hardware/ups/moahof-jual-psu-corensi-500w-full-slave-cable

Btw from now on I would translate some namuwiki page for computer parts only. I do not deal with KPop articles unless if they're related to PC parts. Some grammars are fixed, and I used google translate. Namu wiki's work is available under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 KR . (However, except for some documents and illustrations for which the license is specified)

1. INTRODUCTION OF CORENSI PSU

At the end of 2008, Core NSI, a Korean computer parts company (after this incident, this company was acquired by Abko and defunct) sold a bomb/anti-aircraft missile PSU. This is famous "Don't Ask Power/Pong Power" (A.K.A fake wattage PSU). In 2009, This product was the most popular in Danawa (korean website to compare price, mostly pc parts oriented), but because this PSU is notable to explode, giving it the nickname “Punggong/Cheongung”.

2. WHY CORENSI PSU SELLS LIKE HOT CAKE?

The reasons why Cheongung PSU, that has underwhelming performance, rose to the top of the popularity rankings in Danawa are summarized in these three categories.

• Rank manipulation according to Danawa 's commission
• Testimonials written by many lackluster reviewers (reviewing without proper PSU load tester, no, not that cheap tiny PSU tester that just glorified voltmeter.)
• Blind confidence in the specifications of general consumers who lack hardware knowledge and doesn't care the PSU.

PSU is relatively hard to tell in terms of quality and performance. In order to test those, you need specialized equipment (like dummy load tester, oscilloscope, and main voltage transformer to simulate mains electricity fluctuation), and appropriate expertise. The same goes for other electronic components such as monitors, but PSU deserves more reviews because the quality of the power is almost hard to determine with the eyes of the average consumer (since those load testers aren't cheap either! SunMoon SM 8800 costs five grand, DIY option involves mosfet, resistors, and 12v bulb.). However, many reviewers who need to test the quality published poorly made reviews after testing them roughly without even having the minimum equipment such as an oscilloscope. After testing with Cheongung 500W PSU installed on the PC with 200W power use, there was no weird thing happen in performance. This low-power configuration (iGPU, and no GPU/GPU without 6 pin) did not stress the PSU, so that's why there nothing weird happen. There have been many reviews like this in the past till this day. The flood of poorly made reviews soon leads to a decrease in consumer judgment, and although there are proper professional reviews, it's very lacking back then. It was only after the Cheongung was sold for a long time that an incident occurred when a professional reviewer measured it with the right equipment and conditions such as load tester.

At that time, the average price of a 500W power supply was about 50,000 won, but the Cheongung 500W PSU costs 35,000 won, which is 30% cheaper. Even at that time, there was a 500W pong power (a.k.a fake wattage PSU) from 10,000 won to 20,000 won, so it was not a very cheap either. In the end, it was cheaper than other PSU, but it wasn't a cheap price enough to be questioned as a don't ask power, it was an appropriate price. The company emphasized that this product is rated at 500W, so it has ample capacity (note that the bigger the wattage doesn't mean the PSU would consume all wattage stated on the box, so it's OK to use 500w PSU on 450/900w electric plan as long as the PC is power efficient, and soft starter are used since it could cause circuit breaker tripped) and many consumers bought it under the impression that it was a cheap and popular product. In addition, the PC case sold by this company was inexpensive, but the finish and design were quite usable, so there were many consumers who bought it with power. This is the reason why Cheongung pong PSU/bomb became famous. In fact, it is common in the past and now to use the PSU and it commits suicide or even exploding, taking away with parts connected to it. However, Cheongung Pong PSU/bomb received a buff of  'a good domestic computer parts manufacturer' and sold a lot, and the damage was proportional to that.

However, the problem is that the 500W Cheongung was lighter in weight than the Sky Digital Power Station 350W PSU. This is an example of how bad the PSU is because in power supply, weight and performance are proportional. (more heavy=more part=better guts, but beware that this can be faked with ballast/concrete to fool buyers like this Hantol PSU!) The buyer that doesn't experience any major problems used only 100-200W for idle or Internet-opening operation (low-power configuration like iGPU, and no GPU/GPU without 6 pin), so there was no problem for them. However, when using this PSU with high-end spec that consumes a lot of power to play high end 3D games or professional programs, problems often occur.

Therefore, in DC Inside's forum it got nickname "Cheongung Pong/Explosive PSU" because of its poor performance, but other products were also called "Aone Pong/Explosive PSU" and "Hiroichi Pong/Explosive PSU", so it was not a particularly prominent nickname until this time.

3. THE PSU GOES BANG!

But in June 2009 Playware and nowpug.com does better testing. In the Playwares test, the PSU didn't turn on over 300W load. There were some brands where PSU died at all, but Cheongung didn't die at all. However, because it was close to the limit of power, the figure deteriorated sharply and recorded the last level. If the 500W product has a combined output of 12V, the total actual output is 490W, but the performance is much lower than that.

The next Nowpug.com did some tests, something serious happened. When given 100% load with load tester, the PSU exploded (the explosion part has been since deleted). The news spread widely and shocked people. To make matters worse, the experiences of existing users who suffered PSU deaths and explosions as a result of this incident were also posted one after another. As many were sold, the repercussions were bound to be even greater. Because the product really exploded, the nickname " Cheongung Pong PSU/bomb" spread quickly.

In DC Inside forum, Cheongung, AONE, and Big Beam (aka Bigfoot) was known as three famous explosive PSUs.

It has already been discontinued, but be careful as it may be wandering around in the thrift market, and international market. Uh oh. The keyword for non Korean market is "Corensi PSU". Sometimes, gacha based "PSU ex Korea/Korean true rated PSU" will have this drop alongside pong power PSU (model is 500, but actually 300w PSU). This PSU been seen sold used import in Pakistan, Indonesia, and Philippines. 

Soldering condition is worse than the ones made by amateurs. Yikes.

4. DEATH OF CORENSI

this is translated, visit original page

This situation of PSU explosion also happened with GMC 's "Phoong (풍), trans. Wind" and NEWZEN's "Hero (like Prime series)", which were also killed in the Playware's test at the time,  however those company made an official statement and took appropriate action quickly, such as releasing an improved new product and discontinuation of affected product. However, Core NSI constantly denies any problem with that PSU and indiscriminately deleted the accusatory comments that overflowed in the comments, and even showed a negative attitude to report it to the cyber investigation team. (similar to P750GM, but actually at one point new batch of P750GM just been tested by Aris Mpitziopoulos and doesn't explode. Great.)

As a result, consumers properly turned their backs on Cheongung, and eventually went out of business in 2012. In the comments of the two products left in Danawa, only jokes about this PSU are written, prayer's, etc....

There are advertisements that advertise that the heat sink looks huge enough to protrude out of the case, but if you look closely, the heat sink is deliberately pulled out of the case rather than protruding because the heat sink is huge. If you ask Danawa's computer estimate for on a high-end computer, Danawa recommends using a different PSU.

5. THE FATE OF CORE NSI

The CORE NSI PSU has several models. There's Frost flower/빙화 (has no protuding heatsink; in red color), snow glaciers/설빙화 (same with frost flower but in blue color), spiders/거미로 (like two previous but with spider image and green color), and the well-known 'Iceberg a.k.a Bingsan' which has a protruding heat sink as shown in the photo above. The other three products are equipped with a cooler at the bottom of the product like a general power supply, but apart from this and the design, there is nothing to see. In the case of Iceberg/Bingsan, a cheap version of Classic and its sequel, BINGSAN (Iceberg/빙산)2 UFO, were released. Of course, there was no change in the fact that this side was also a pong power/fake wattage.

In addition to Cheongung, there are also HERZ PSU, and some products (although there is only one product line) showed unexpected appearances but receiving 80Plus certification. It seems that such a product has been released for the purpose of renewing the image, but there is no way to restore the credibility that has once fallen for such a thing...

Yes, it looks like it will explode

Eventually, in December 2011, a new company called Ncore Infotech was established to replace Core NSI. The name of the representative has changed and the registration has been renewed. It was a company established by the remaining employees succeeding to the case lineup of Core NSI when Core NSI went bankrupt due to the Cheongung incident. The case family was moved to the new company's website, but the power supply product line was not succeeded at all due to the Cheongung incident, so it was blank.

Since June 2012, Absolute Korea was merged to become a company called "Abko" (today doing business internationally as ABKONCORE), and due to this, Abko continued to act as an AS for Core NSI products, which Encore Infotech had acted for for a while. Afterwards, Abko discontinued the Cheongung product line as well as other power products that were sold before acquiring Encore Infotech. The Super Power series and One Thousand and One Nights series sold during the Absolute Korea era before the acquisition of Encore Infotech were pong power/fake wattage that was comparable to pong power/fake wattage, and kinda ironic that a company that distributed high-performance and power hungry professional graphic cards like GTS 250 BAXTER and Quadro FX sold these. The Formula series (is straight up rebadged FSP Blue Storm 2), was fairly decent, but the Formula series was also discontinued altogether. It seems to be focusing on the case side for now. This time, Abco's attention is focused on its non-contact keyboard, and the key is how to make up for Penggung's mistake.

In fact, parts other than Core, Encore, Absolute or Power were complied with. The reason Punggung sold so much was because the rest of the parts, such as the case of Core, were quite decent and boasted a high cost-effectiveness. It's been about 10 years now, and the case chassis can't keep up with the upwardly leveled trend, so it's almost a credible app, but at the time of the late 2000s, the case chassis was there even if it was from a different manufacturer, except for a few outstanding high-end products. It was also a time when there were a lot of high-quality, no-nonsense cases that were not worth the money, so the cases sold in the days of Corea and Encore were worthy of use among ultra-low-priced products of 20,000 to 30,000 won, with a good finish and a decent chassis. Abko, which took over Encore Infotech and acted as a Cheongung Power AS for a while, accidentally got their image tarnished (alongside with the image of fake wattage from the existing Super Power series and Thousand and One Nights series remained). Abko decided to stop selling PSU altogether, until...

In July 2018 (according to certification date: May 24-31, 2018), Abko released new SUITMASTER Mighty 500, 600, 700W (outside of Korea maybe the name of SUITMASTER is omitted and sold as Abkoncore Mighty? However, taking look at ABKONCORE MIGHTY dismantling video and Korean SUITMASTER ones shows different guts.) to re-enter the power supply market, and it seems that they have come up with something good like the previous Formula series, such as getting 80PLUS certification. It seems that the Abko also conscious of the fact that it had overturned the image of the past fake wattage PSU, or that it was released under the SUITMASTER brand rather than the Abko brand. However, the price is not much different from the 80PLUS entry-level products of famous companies such as Micronics or FSP of the same wattage, or it is priced at a higher price (...), so it is evaluated as having little competitiveness in the entry-level power line. This MIGHTY model is built by HKC overseas limited (Suitmaster: Mighty 500w, Mighty 600w), Settler by Dongguan Yu Jia Electronics Co., Ltd. (Settler: Settler 600w, Settler 700w), and other higher end models are made by Andyson like Tenergy and CR (see this dismantling video). Fun fact: I have seen a seller selling this exact used Korean PSU, SUITMASTER MIGHTY 500w, and it's not branded as Abkoncore. Listed circa 24 March of 2022.

After the Punggung incident, no matter how reliable other parts are, there is a tendency to avoid them unless there is a certification for power or a case where power is also recognized. That's why famous powers like Seasonic, FSP, and Delta sell well.

Nvidia's 2018 GeForce 20 series graphics card had a series of fire and death issues, and it was ridiculed as a '1.5 million won heavenly palace'.