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Design & Features
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Needless to say, Ultra has some of the most
visually appealing power supplies on the market. The X2 is
absolutely no exception with its mirror-like quality titanium finish, black
honeycomb-style fan grill, and accented fan guard. Speaking of fans,
it sports a larger 120mm low noise fan.
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The rear of the unit is fairly standard with a
voltage and on/off switch. The front of the unit sports the modular
jacks.
Dual Rail Technology
Dual rail technology is their method of
providing the utmost power to all components, regardless of setup and/or
use.
- Better Power
Distribution - The X-Connect distributes 12V power to the
components that require it the most in
modern PC's.
- Dedicated CPU Rail - Dedicated 12V Rail for the 2x2
Motherboard Connector
- More stable power when you need it...
While all this may seem like a gimmick to
most, its performance certainly does impress. More on that later...
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The biggest improvement with this model are
the cables. Unlike their first X-Connect PSU, these "Flex Force"
cables are much easier to manage and don't have huge bulky connectors like
the
ones found on the first model I looked at. They also include a
very generous supply of them, including SATA cables.
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Just for kicks, I installed the unit in the
Sytrin
Nextherm case and ran the system with the excellent CoolIT Freezone.
For those unfamiliar with this case, it features a thermoelectric cooler
that acts as an "air-conditioner" to draw in cold air. Also note that
the Freezone uses TECs to cool as well. Just to give you an idea of
the power it is capable of, I attempted to run both the Sytrin cooler and
the CoolIT Freezone. To my surprise, the unit was able to handle both
for about 12 minutes. At this point, the Sytrin cooler failed to work.
This was just to test its true capabilities though and the test results
consisted of only the CoolIT Freezone running.
Performance
The new Ultra X2 is designed to provide 550W of
power under full load. To measure its performance, system was tested
both at Idle (after 1hr) and under load. To load the system,
Sisoftware's SANDRA 2005 Burn-In Wizard was used. The utility I've
always used here in the past to capture voltages was Motherboard Monitor.
Unfortunately, development has stopped and I used the next best app...SpeedFan.
Results were impressive, considering I was
running a variety of power-hungry components. It shows just what a
quality 550W PSU can offer. The only significant difference was the
+12V rail as expected. All other readings were well within specs.
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