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Ultra Products X-Connect


Date
: 07/29/04 – 10:56:55 PM

Author
:

Category
: Power Supplies

Page 1 : Introduction

Manufacturer
: Ultra Products

Price
: $129 USD

It's been a very long time since anything about power supplies was covered at Overclockers Online. However, it has been done! Back in April of
2002
Steven looked at two iCute Power Supplies in this review. Today I have the Ultra Product X-Connect 500 W ATX Power Supply!

I was hoping to have this product reviewed a while ago, except I ran into a few delays. Customs officials decided to hold the product for a good while. Last time I received the package from Ultra, it took less than 24 hrs. If you order from a retailer like Frozen CPU, you won't have this type of delay: I waited about 2.5 weeks before Customs called me and asked me if I was expecting anything. Maybe they thought this power supply was too pimping to be true. Regardless, after the phone call I got the unit the next business day.

You may be wondering what's the difference between this power supply and just about everything else in the market. They all do the same thing, convert AC power into DC power for your computer. This is somewhat true as the X-Connect does all that but it also does so much more! Stay tuned as I show you the ins and outs of this new toy.

Page 2 : Package

When I cut open the massive UPS box, the retail package was wedged inside the box with a lot of bubble wrap. There was no way the retail package was going to be damaged, and it wasn't. Not a single scratch or a major dent on the corners.

Opening up the retail box you are presented with yet another box!

What you are really looking for is what's underneath the cable box – the actual power supply. With the unit sandwiched in place by two thick pieces of foam, this thing won't go anywhere!

Let's move onto the specifications.

Page 3 : Specifications

I'm going to quote the specifications from Ultra Products.

You will also find your miscellaneous bunch of things, in this case it is the manual, AC power cord and screws.

There are a lot of interesting things inside the manual. Only the first two or three pages are relevant to using the unit; the last couple describe the operation of the drive in detail. I'll go through both of these:

Cable Technology and Installation
According to Ultra, the X-Connect uses the X-Cable technology, and that incorporates 4 points. First the molded cable core and connectors will eliminate loose wires. Later in the review, you will see before and after pictures of my system just to emphasize this point. Second, the technology uses premium tinned-copper braiding sleeve, not just your ordinary tinned-copper braining sleeve! Third, and the most interesting one, the X-Connect power supply has a UV translucent effect, not only will your watercooling fluid, IDE cables and fans glow, so will your cables! Lastly, the technology must have superior strength and flexibility for the life of your system. Ain't that great, it almost sounds like lifetime warranty!

Electrical Information

Input

Voltage Range
115 Volt Nominal: 103V Minimum, 132V Maximum
230 Volt Nominal: 206V Minimum, 264V Maximum

Maximum Steady State Current
115VAC (RMS): 10A
230VAC (RMS): 5A

VAC = Volts Alternating Current
RMS = Root Mean Square

Maximum Cold Start Inrush Current @ 25 degrees Celsiis
115 VAC: 50 A
230 VAC: 100A

Operating Frequency
50Hz-60Hz

Power Efficiency
A maximum of 70% at full load, 115230 VAC 60Hz/50Hz

Outputs
Probably the most important part of any power supply.

+5 Volts
Maximum Load: 30 A
Minimum Load: 0.3 A
Regulation: 5%
Ripple & Noise (mv): 50

+12 Volts
Maximum Load: 34 A
Minimum Load: 2 A
Regulation: 5%
Ripple & Noise (mv): 120

+3.3 Volts
Maximum Load: 28 A
Minimum Load: 0.5 A
Regulation: 5%
Ripple & Noise (mv): 50

-5 Volts
Maximum Load: 0.3 A
Minimum Load: 0 A
Regulation: 10%
Ripple & Noise (mv): 50

-12 Volts
Maximum Load: 0.3 A
Minimum Load: 0 A
Regulation: 10%
Ripple & Noise (mv): 120

+5VSB Volts
Maximum Load: 2 A
Minimum Load: 0 A
Regulation: 5%
Ripple & Noise (mv): 50

Note that the total continuous maximum output wattage is 500Watts for all the lines, however it is 480Watts for the +5V, +12V and +3.3V.

Overvoltage Protection
Overvoltage protects the power supply and your components from deep frying in the even of a spike or a short. This feature kicks in if the +5V rail reaches 6.1V or the +12V rail reaches 14.3 or the +3.3V rail reaches 4.1 V.

Operating Environment
Ambient operation temperature: 0 to +40
Ambient operation relative humidity: 20% to 90%
Ambient storage temperature: -20 to +85 I guess this means don't leave it outside in the winter if you live in Canada :)
Ambient storage relative humidity: 10% to 95%

Page 4 : Installation

Installation was very easy. I took out my old Enermax Power 350 Watt power supply and replaced it with the new XConnect. Using only the cables I actually needed, I plugged in the 4 pin Intel Pentium 4 Motherboard Power Cable, 20 Pin ATX Motherboard Power Cable, the Y-Cable with Floppy Drive and both single 4 pin Power Cables. I also took the time to reorganize the rest of the cables that I had with some Blue UV sleeving.

One of the most obvious differences between my old setup and the new setup is the change in rounded IDE cables, I went from clear to red. I also added a fan or two and changed the RAM from the giga
ram
to Ultra 2*512 PC3200 Dual Channel Kit. None of these changes actually affected the overall result. The reason why this happened is because Ultra Products was kind enough to add a few little extra somethings to my review package.

Everything you see in that photo was given to me for this review. That's a truck load of red goodies, all UV reactive too. You know what that means….stay tuned for some pimping UV photos.

The complete installation, including rewiring of the excess cables took just over 1 hr. There are a lot of cables you can't see and sleeving the excess took a little while.

Here are some more pictures of this computer in action!

If you open up the power supply, you'll find its jam packed with things.

The heatsinks don't look all that big either. All together, the power supply weighed in just under 5 lbs.

If you want to change the stock 80 mm fans, it won't be much of a problem. You won't even need to do any soldering, just plug in to the those easy removable connectors. The stock ones apparently push 41 CFM and are reated for 34 dBa.

You can see the normal 20 Pin ATX connector inside here. You can tell there has been a lot of thought in designing the power supply as everything is a tight fit, especially considering how they added the stock connector inside and not just some customized port for the XConnect 20Pin ATX cable to plug into.

That picture above is pretty plain. It just shows what happens when you plug in the individual molex connectors. It's just one long rail as I suspected.

Page 5 : Testing

Here is the system I installed the Ultra Products XConnect Power Supply into.

Abit NF7-S rev 2.0
AMD Mobile Athlon XP 2500+ @ 200*12
Ultra Products 2*512 MB PC3200 Dual Channel Kit
HIS ATi 9550 VIVO Stock
Asetek KT03A-L30 WaterCooling
10 GB ATA 100 5400 RPM Hard Drive (My Maxtor is on its last leg….SATA time!)
LiteON SOHW 1213S Provided by LiteON – review in action
2*80mm Red UV reactive fans @ 7V
2*80mm Round UV CCFL
2*12" UV CCFL
2*12" Red CCFL
2*20mm Vantec Stealth fans @ 12 V
1*Temperature Probe [was not powered in any of the tests]

In the photos you will see a floppy drive, this drive was not activated because I didn't have enough Floppy Drive cables. The XConnect provides only 1 Y-Cable with a Floppy Drive connector and this one was currently used to power my water cooling pump. In the future I would like to see either one more Y-Cable with a Floppy Drive Connector, or a Floppy Drive Connector on its own. Some SATA power connectors would also be nice as they are growing very fast in popularity.

I tested the power supply in 9 different conditions.

Case #1: Power supply powered with no motherboard connected. Checked the rails at the 4 Pin Molex and the 20 Pin ATX Connector.
Case #2: Motherboard, 4 Pin Intel Pentium 4 Motherboard power cable and a Floppy Drive Connector for my Pump. I checked the rails on a 4 Pin Molex and read the readings in the BIOS.
Case #3: Using Case #2, I added a 120mm fan operating at 12Vs and checked the rails on the 4 Pin Molex as well as the readins in the BIOS.
Case #4: Using Case #3, I added another 120mm fan operating at 12V and checked the same rails.
Case #5: Using Case #4, I added the 2 80mm fans operating at 7 Volts and checked the same rails.
Case #6: Using Case #5, I added the hard drive and dvd writer. I checked the rails at the 4 Pin Molex and took the readings from motherboard monitor after the voltages leveled.
Case #7: I powered everything listed in the specifications above except for the temperature probe. I took the rails at the 4 Pin Molex and read the readings from motherboard monitor after the voltages leveled.
Case #8: Using Case #6, I put the computer in full load by running Folding @ Home and RC5. I took the rails at the 4 Pin Molex and read the readings from motherboard monitor after the voltages leveled.
Case #9: Using Case #7, I put the computer in full load by running Folding @ Home and RC5. I took the rails at the 4 Pin Molex and read the readings from motherboard monitor after the voltages leveled.

As you can see, the performance is quite good. Everything is stable and well within the 5 or 10 percent tolerance.

Sound-wise, the power supply wasn't all too noisy. I've heard quieter but then I've also heard noiser. Considering I don't have a case, it was pretty easy to detect which part of my system was the loudest and it wasn't the power supply. It ranked somewhere in the middle. The two 80mm UV reactive fans at 12 volts were much louder than everything else. After I dropped those fans to 7Vs, the 120mm fans at 12Vs for my radiator were much louder than the power supply fans. This was due to the vibration of the 120mm fans against the sides panel.

Page 6 : Conclusion

After some rigorous torturing of this power supply I think I'll let it sit for the rest of the night. However, I've been very pleased with this unit. It has not failed in any way. Even though I created a couple shorts that caused the system to shutdown, after flicking the big power switch off and then on again, the system was back up and running without any hitches.

Advantages

Stable Rails
Sleek titanium blue look
Less cables
UV reactive

Disadvantages

No SATA
Only 1 Floppy Drive Connector
Expensive

The first two flaws I listed are really just minor ones, and with quality and going above and beyond the competition, you usually have to pay a premium. For a few extra bucks, you can also buy the extra adapters you need. Granted they won't be UV reactive and of similar style, it'll do you just fine. With that said, I feel Ultra Products has earned the Overclockers Online POWER Award for this innovative and wonderfully produced product.

A great big thanks to Ultra Products for making this review possible.