The Reverse-Engineered Corsair PSU Linux Driver Continues To Be Improved Upon

[phoronix]

Phoronix: The Reverse-Engineered Corsair PSU Linux Driver Continues To Be Improved Upon

Added for Linux 5.11 was an independently-developed, reverse-engineered Corsair power supply driver for the company's desktop PSUs supporting their USB-based "LINK" interface for exposing voltage, temperature, current, and Wattage under Linux. This open-source "corsair-psu" driver has continued maturing as well since being mainlined...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Corsair-PSU-Driver-Linux-Crit

[uid313]

Sounds kind of useless. More like a "cool" feature that provides no real benefit. When it comes to power supplies, the most important thing for me is the efficiency, such as having 80 Plus Platinum or 80 Plus Titanium certification.

I guess it would be pretty cool if the "12-V only" thing took off, but it doesn't seem to.

[caligula]

Sounds kind of useless. More like a "cool" feature that provides no real benefit. When it comes to power supplies, the most important thing for me is the efficiency, such as having 80 Plus Platinum or 80 Plus Titanium certification.

I guess it would be pretty cool if the "12-V only" thing took off, but it doesn't seem to.

If only the temp/fan monitoring had a standard interface. Would be so much easier to manage all the tuning of cooling.

[Adarion]

Wonder why they put 80+Ti above 80+Pt. Rather should've used Os or Rh... don't mind me, just the chemist talking to himself.

But drivers like this are welcome, just sad that these drivers have to be reverse-engineered and are usually only useful for one model of one vendor (at least in the early stages).

[Yoshi]

The 80+ cert is questionable, at least:

https://www.igorslab.de/en/how-a-quasi-monopoly-from-2021-the-power-supply-price-up-down-not-meaning-certificates-for-un-tested-power-supplies-inclusive/

Efficiency is important but 80Plus isn't the best choice for such information.

[zeb_]

Just curious: why does the Linux support need reverse-engineering of the drivers? Is it because Corsair has declined to collaborate with the authors? That reminds me a decade ago I received a cease and desist letter from a famous DVD-burner company, because I published a software under Linux using the quality scan capability of the drive - which was transmitted in clear by the DVD drive! On the other hand I helped a few years ago with the development of an ALSA driver for the Terratec Aureon 7.1 sound card. I contacted the maker Terractec (a German company) and not only were they extremely supportive, they also provided all the necessary specifications of the card - no questions ask, only a blessing! I wonder in which category Corsair belongs to?

[Akiko]

Just curious: why does the Linux support need reverse-engineering of the drivers? Is it because Corsair has declined to collaborate with the authors?

I'm the author of the corsair-psu driver ... well, I never thought about contacting Corsair. Though I did contact vendors in the past. But as a developer who does this in private (and not part of a company) you are basically ignored most of the time. At least my success rate was below 5%. But yeah, if I try now after the driver got mainlined I may get some support. I still need the protocol of the AXi series (which do not use USB HID).

[stiiixy]

12V PSU's would be aqesome!

And I had a giggle at USB PSU's. The nonsense has huge potential!

[Dedale]

Thank you for your work Akiko. Even if i use an old TX650 corsair.

[Nout]

Sounds kind of useless. More like a "cool" feature that provides no real benefit.

Nothing wrong with a cool feature. I got one of those, and with this driver I now have the total system power consumption in my status bar, along with CPU/GPU freq and temp.

On Windows the Corsair Link app is bloatware, so it is indeed pretty useless. With the kernel driver however, it's just a matter of

cat /sys/class/hwmon/hwmonX/power1_input

On the hardware side it's just an internal USB cable between the motherboard and the PSU. That's a pretty elegant solution IMO.