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Ultra Products UV X-Connect


Date
: 01/5/05 – 01:09:15 AM

Author
:

Category
: Power Supplies

Page 1 : Introduction

Manufacturer
: Ultra Products

Price
: MSRP 149.99

Ultra Products is definitely a well known name around here. Many months ago I took at look at the original X-Connect. Not only was it able to provide ample voltage to my hardware, but it was fully modular and quite pimping. It wasn't too long ago that Ultra Products released the second version of the X-Connect. If you thought it couldn't get any better, guess again.

Today I'll present the UV Orange X-Connect with the glossy electric blue finish! So without further ado…

Page 2 : Package

Looking at my personal archive, I can tell you that I've done 5 complete (including this one) Ultra reviews. At Overclockers Online, we've been fortunate to have a look at many of Ultra's products which include cases, external enclosures, memory and MP3 players – we've got our own little Ultra inventory. Every time something shows up, it is in top notch condition. I received the UV X-Connect in its original wrapping with a UPS sticker smacked on top. I cut out the cellophane wrap to reveal the goods.

As you can tell, this box received its fair share of handling from UPS. If you've read my previous X-Connect review then you know how important aesthetics is. Severe damage to the package
could
mean severe damage to the paint job…

Once you open up the package, the first thing you see is not the power supply. Instead, you see a second box. This box contains all the cables for the X-Connect. We'll get into more detail about this later.

Inside the box is a set of 9 X-Connect cables, a bag of screws and an AC power cord.

Below the cable box is really what you paid for. The X-Connect. It is wrapped in its own plastic bag and padded with 3/4" foam around the edge and centered in the box by another 2" of foam. All in all, a very safe packaging job.

Removing the padding and wrapping reveals the actual power supply.

The paint job is absolutely marvelous. It is very reflective.

The bottom of the power supply sports a window, 80mm UV reactive fan and the 80mm UV CCFL.

There are 3 windows on this power supply, one looking like the image above, and the other two looking like the one below.

The power supply is pretty packed so there isn't much to see into.

If we open up the power supply, we can tell it is quite full. Clearly all the components required for a power supply are included.

Slightly to the middle right of the power supply, labeled MTRERL44-15-66C, appears to be a component wrapped in blue electrical tape. Some interesting craftsmanship. Looking at the top right of the power supply, you can even tell that the power switch is UV reactive!

I was quite surprised by the size of the heatsinks inside. These two suckers aren't very big. Pretty much the same size as the first X-Connect.

Like the first X-Connect I looked at, the rails were connected at one point inside the power supply. Unfortunately, this does not allow for a dedicated 12V VGA rail for the motherboard or video card. Dedicating rails would prove to be advantageous when it comes to overclocking and ensuring your components are properly powered.

On the top of the power supply is a plain old sticker indicating some of the features. A lot more detail is provided on the next page.

Since this is a fully modular power supply, covers are provided to the molex ends to prevent accidental shorting and to prevent dust build up.

What's clearly missing is some form of retention system to ensure that the modular molex cables do not come lose while moving your case around.

If you require additional cables, such as a 24 pin ATX cable, you can purchase them from Ultra Products. For testing purposes, I've also received the 20-24 pin ATX connector. What's missing is a PCI-e power cable for the high end video cards that'll be requiring them.

Maybe it's good to note that Ultra Product sells the 20 to 24 pin ATX as a single 17.75" piece and not as a short adapter to the current 20 pin ATX connector. I've also got the UV Blue model but they come in all available X-Connect colors: blue, green and orange.

Now that we have the key components, let's move onto the details.

Page 3 : Specifications

The first thing I immediately noticed was how thin the manual is. It's a whole 11 pages. I must admit, most users would not need a manual when it comes to installing a power supply, and most users are concerned only about the total wattage and the maximum current on each rail. Granted those values are important, there are other things users could be aware of.

Here are the key details:

Outputs

Cables

Some other relevant information:

From what I've read and heard, there have been some changes made to the cables. The first generation cables were stiff and hard to bend. I assure you that this has changed. The new cables are very flexible and can be bent into the tightest corners without any problem.

Obviously the most unique feature of this power supply is the UV reactivity. The Plexiglass and both 80mm fans are orange UV reactive. The UV CCFL is a simple 80mm UV CCFL attached to the intake fan.

Page 4 : Installation

Installation is pretty simple; take your standard Philips screw driver and unscrew your old power supply. Next, slide in the UV X-Connect and secure that to the chassis. Taking only the molex connectors you need, power all your components. The idea is to use the least amount of cables necessary, for some machines that's pretty easy. However, if you have a ton of equipment, it's still fairly hard to make everything look organized.

For my test machine, it is composed of the following equipment:

This isn't the most power consuming rig out there in the world, but it is a fair bit of equipment and should be a decent representation of most computers. To test the performance of the power supply I put the system under full load for 5 hour using Folding@Home and Sisoft CPU Burn-in. I then took the voltage readings from the 20-pin ATX connector from inside the power supply. After reading 3 measurements and taking the average, I let the system run idle for another 5 hours. At this point, I took 3 more measurements from the 20-pin ATX connector and found the average. The results are tabulated below. The difference between the mean, minimum and maximum values were less than 0.05 Volts. Measurements were taken using a digital multimeter with 0.10mV accuracy.

As you can tell, the rails didn't change very much when under loaded or idle conditions. All the voltages were slightly above the theoretical value, but not enough to cause any concern.

If you're wondering about noise, there's not much to discuss. The unit is very quiet during operation and when powered with the rest of the system, other fans masked the noise of the X-Connect.

Page 5 : Image Gallery

The whole purpose of the X-Connect is to show it off in a nice case. What better place to use it than in my BeanTech BT-85 acrylic case. I won't have much say in this page, but here are a bunch of pictures:

With the flash on, you can still see the mess of cables at the bottom of the case that I have yet to clean up.

Page 6 : Conclusion

The UV X-Connect is another high quality product. Ultra Product engineers are expecting to add dedicated rails, and hopefully in the future we'll see some filtered rails and EMI Shielding like in the RaidMax power supply we've looked at. Afterwards there won't be much left for Ultra Products to do on the X-Connect but let the sales cash in. This is one popular power supply and in many places still very hard to find. The sales in Canada and in Europe have just begun, but it won't be very long until there will be one of these in many computer enthusiast's systems.

The overall performance was amazing. Although it is expensive, costing 150 USD dollars, the 500 watts it provides will suit anyone nicely for years to come. The investment now will bring you peace knowing that your hardware is safe from being underpowered and it won't be a limiting factor of overclocking or sticking in those extra hard drives.

Advantages

Modular
Lots of power
Great performance
Continuous improvements made by Ultra Products

Disadvantages

No dedicate rails yet
No filtered rails or additional EMI Shielding