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- Date:
- Wednesday, February 06, 2008
- Author:
- Paul Johnson
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
Ultra X2 Extreme Edition 750w Power Supply
Ultra hits rock bottom with a 750 watt PSU that claims NVIDIA SLI certification. Make a note to stay as far away from this flaming hunk of crap as you possibly can. If not, we highly suggest you make sure and have a fire extinguisher handy.
Overview
The first thing we are going to look at with the X2 750w is its packaging, accessories, and documentation. While none of these items is a real make or break item for a power supply the packaging quite often contains a lot of information about the product we are purchasing. The inclusion of an owner’s manual that provides actual information about our product is also of great help. Accessories are almost unnecessary with a power supply as the unit is self contained, unless it is modular, but there cases where a manufacturer can include useful accessories to make installation, routing and use more efficient.
The Ultra X2 750w packaging is similar to the X3 series we have been reviewing a lot lately but slightly different in that it does not have the exterior sleeve. Otherwise the information carried is very similar to all Ultra power supplies we have reviewed to date. This includes the power label that is broken down below, SLI certified sticker, the Ultra Silent sticker, the Ultra Lifetime warranty, and on the power table that the unit is 75% efficient at "normal" loads. With these things in hand we looked to the SLIZone website for verification, but at the time of writing the X2 750w was not listed on the website as certified for any level of SLI. This certainly is unusual that the unit is not listed and the 750w unit listed is the X-Pro 750w we reviewed a long time ago. Moving on the advertisement of 75% efficiency is certainly not good in this day and age with the advent of things like the 80Plus program. This seems to indicate (along with the lack of APFC) that we are looking at an older power supply design today in the X2 750w which can still certainly be functional but it could also be a recycled design/product with a shiny new sticker. Finally, there is the Ultra Lifetime warranty. We have addressed this in each Ultra review we have done but to reiterate, in order to get the Limited Lifetime Warranty you have to register the product:
To ensure your complete satisfaction, all Ultra Products Power Supplies and Cases now carry a three year warranty that they will be free from defects in materials or workmanship. In addition, that warranty is upgradable to a LIFETIME warranty by simply registering online. Additionally, all our other products carry a one-year warranty which is also upgradable to a three year warranty. At Ultra, customer service is our most important mission. That’s why every Ultra product must meet the highest industry standards for quality and reliability. And our warranty program is second to none.
This is hardly difficult and as such we would recommend all users register their Ultra power supplies for the free extension of the warranty.
The power characteristics of the Ultra X2 750w are interesting. To start with the 12v rails each have 25A available to them with a total of 50A or 80% possible capacity available on the 12v rails. The issue here is that 12v2 only feeds the CPU which gives it 300w's and that is a huge amount that is not going to be well apportioned as 12v1 also gets only 300w's. With these two rails being divided evenly in this manner the 12v1 rail now has 2 6 pin PCI-Express connectors (that can draw 150w all by themselves) plus all the other connectors to support with this 300w budget. However, with just 5 Molex connectors and 3 SATA connectors most people won't have a large power draw coming through these connectors but it is theoretically possible to over draw this rail in this configuration.
Once we open the packaging of the X2 750w we find the same basic assortment of items we have seen with all the previous Ultra power supplies we have reviewed (excluding the X3 1600w). There is the power supply itself, a box of cables, mounting screws, warranty card, and manual. The manual has been fleshed out once more compared to the X3 600w and the consistency is now perfect. The manual is 10 pages and includes just about everything a user would need including the pinouts, power tables, installation instructions, physical specifications, electrical specifications, safety approvals, transient response, and efficiency graph. The only item missing from the manual is the warranty information but this is included in the warranty card so we can't really fault Ultra for this. In the end this is some of the most complete documentation we have seen to date and a real positive move for Ultra over the time we have been covering their power supplies.