400-450W PSU Roundup
by Christoph Katzer on November 6, 2007 4:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
Ultra V-Series 400W
Ultra sent us their V-Series 400W power supply for this roundup, but testing revealed quite a few surprises. We'll get to those in a moment, but let's start with initial impressions. Like many other power supplies, the Ultra 400W is black and has a 120mm fan intake fan located on the bottom. The exhaust has square-shaped holes punched out, except for right around the power connector, switch, and the voltage selector. Wait... voltage selector!? One of the first things surprises is the small red switch that allows users to choose between 115VAC and 230VAC power input. It has been a long time since we've seen such a switch -- these were commonplace several years ago, but today their presence is usually an indication of a very cheap power supply. Let's not draw any premature conclusions, however; we'll give it a try and maybe get some interesting results. Since there are only two options for power input, we only tested this unit with 115VAC and 230VAC.
The label shows a single 12V rail rated for 20A, a 5V rail rated at 30A, and a 3.3V rail with up to 18A. This power supply does not meet current ATX12V 2.x standards; it appears to be more of an ATX12V 1.2 PSU -- circa 2004.
One of the better aspects of this power supply is the cables. They are very nice since they are all flat like IDE cables, and there's no need for sleeving since the cables aren't broken up into individual strands. Most of the cables are detachable. The longest cable harness from the Ultra 400W is 65cm long, and it's a floppy connector. The Molex and SATA connectors have a distance of 40cm and 55cm measured from the power supply. The 24-pin connector has a length of 45cm -- tolerable, but it could present difficulties in larger cases. Frankly, we are surprised to see a 6-pin PEG connector, but there it is -- all 40cm of it.
The inside doesn't look too bad, but several components missing. Where is the PFC stage for example? (Yeah, that's what the red switch is for.) The filtering stage is also under-equipped. This topology is definitely very old and we are surprised to see such an old-timer rear its ugly head these days.
Ultra sent us their V-Series 400W power supply for this roundup, but testing revealed quite a few surprises. We'll get to those in a moment, but let's start with initial impressions. Like many other power supplies, the Ultra 400W is black and has a 120mm fan intake fan located on the bottom. The exhaust has square-shaped holes punched out, except for right around the power connector, switch, and the voltage selector. Wait... voltage selector!? One of the first things surprises is the small red switch that allows users to choose between 115VAC and 230VAC power input. It has been a long time since we've seen such a switch -- these were commonplace several years ago, but today their presence is usually an indication of a very cheap power supply. Let's not draw any premature conclusions, however; we'll give it a try and maybe get some interesting results. Since there are only two options for power input, we only tested this unit with 115VAC and 230VAC.
The label shows a single 12V rail rated for 20A, a 5V rail rated at 30A, and a 3.3V rail with up to 18A. This power supply does not meet current ATX12V 2.x standards; it appears to be more of an ATX12V 1.2 PSU -- circa 2004.
One of the better aspects of this power supply is the cables. They are very nice since they are all flat like IDE cables, and there's no need for sleeving since the cables aren't broken up into individual strands. Most of the cables are detachable. The longest cable harness from the Ultra 400W is 65cm long, and it's a floppy connector. The Molex and SATA connectors have a distance of 40cm and 55cm measured from the power supply. The 24-pin connector has a length of 45cm -- tolerable, but it could present difficulties in larger cases. Frankly, we are surprised to see a 6-pin PEG connector, but there it is -- all 40cm of it.
The inside doesn't look too bad, but several components missing. Where is the PFC stage for example? (Yeah, that's what the red switch is for.) The filtering stage is also under-equipped. This topology is definitely very old and we are surprised to see such an old-timer rear its ugly head these days.
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opterondo - Sunday, November 18, 2007 - link
You all do understand that a 1000w PSU doesn't use 1000w right?For instance you hook up 333w peak load worth of components to it it will use ~333w.
The only reason to buy a smaller capacity PSU is up front price and possibly better AC-DC conversion efficiency (like maybe 70% instead of 60%)
opterondo - Sunday, November 18, 2007 - link
Good thing they didn't review any of the COOLMAX PSUs cause they are fairly priced and out perform most any in this article.COOLMAX CX-400B ATX v2.01
COOLMAX CP-500T EPS12V
COOLMAX CXI-500B ATX12V
COOLMAX CUG-700B ATX 12V( V.2.2)
mindless1 - Thursday, November 15, 2007 - link
Months ago I was almost given a vacation in the forums because of shills and naive owners that wouldn't accept my negative comments about Ultra V-Series. I feel a bit vindicated and yet the review didn't even touch in it's primary weakness, poor capacitors leading to poor lifespan even in a system it would be suited to run in.I do have to disagree about one aspect of the review in that the Ultra does have PFC just not active or APFC, and an "old" passive PFC design is not a big deal, a PSU can run fine w/o AFPC and historically there were plenty of decent, not just cheap, PSU with passive PFC evidenced by the input voltage selection switch.
Also in the reviews, please mention the fans' make model and bearing(s) type as they are also weak links when cheap sleeve-bearing types are used.
Kougar - Friday, November 9, 2007 - link
On many of the pages I am seeing empty image placeholders that link to 0x0 pixel images that are 1.5KB in size... someone might want to fix that. :)Christoph Katzer - Friday, November 9, 2007 - link
Working fine here ;)Kougar - Wednesday, November 14, 2007 - link
Do you work for Anandtech???Since an image is worth a thousand words: http://i111.photobucket.com/albums/n129/Chanur64/M...">Image Link
The "missing" ghost image placeholder shows up for every PSU info page.
Christoph Katzer - Thursday, November 15, 2007 - link
Oh yep thanks. Now it's working.grantschoep - Thursday, November 8, 2007 - link
Low end power supplies?I want to to know who the heck needs a 500+ watt power supply that isn't running some crazy dual SLI setup. I really wish power supply makers would focus on quite and very stable/clean voltages.
I wish companies would really focus on very high quality low end systems. 98% of us don't need a 500+ watt power supply. 90% of us don't need a motherboard with as much crap as they tack on(2 1gig network ports for example)
As an electrical engineer, 1 US dollar extra.... could by much better caps and the like.
Heck as a further annoyance, when company A has a PSU fan that is better/quiter than another, why go whit the lesser
I really wish that companies would focus on this. I don't need a 1 KW beast. I want a good, high quality ~450 watt supply that is nice and quite.
erple2 - Thursday, November 8, 2007 - link
I am a bit saddened by the (IMO) relatively unimportant temperature of the heatsinks, or sound ouput. IMO, the single most important measurement of the usefulness of a power supply is, in fact, it's ability to supply power.I would equate evaluating it's value on thermal and acoustic characteristics to evaluating the superiority of a GFX card on it's thermal characteristics. For that effect, my old Matrox Millenium card destroys an 8800GTX.
Seriously, I'd really like to see much more in-depth analysis and evaluation on the stability of the power generation, the cleanliness of the signal, the resistance to sagging based on varying the power requirements, etc.
I understand that acoustics and thermals are important, but they're really secondary to the actual performance of the power generation. If you're overly concerned with the loudness of a power supply, or how hot it gets, instead of the actual performance of the power supply, then maybe you shouldn't be using a computer..
Christoph Katzer - Friday, November 9, 2007 - link
Did you just read the comparison or?