Originally posted by: Operandi
Originally posted by: Omega Ohm
Originally posted by: Operandi
Originally posted by: Omega Ohm
Looks fine to me. The wiring could stand some taping. I'm not sure why they say this thing is so loud. Mine is pretty darn silent but I'm not running it near full load. I'll see what happens when the new parts get here and start overclocking.
Then you don't know what your looking at, judging by internal layout and construction the Ultra is not a high quality unit. Here is what a quality PSU should look like,
Zalman/Forton.
Yea, real nice one you have there. I'm wondering why they even bothered to put a fan in. They could have just poured cement in front of that vent and blocked it just as effectively. Or, maybe there's a different theory behind it's construction?
I'm thinking it's you who doesn't realize what he's looking at. What you're missing is that there's two fans in the ultra, one for intake and one for exhaust. It relies on air flow, not heat sinks to keep cooled so it doesn't need gigantic blocks. That Zalman is more of a heatsink reliant PSU.
Also, the Ultra branded fan is the intake and it faces down into the case, eliminating the need of another top side exhaust fan in a case.
Dual fans is no exuse for crappy heatsinks, look at this
OCZ using dual fans. Even this 300 watt
Seasonic has more heatsink surface area.
Notice the intake/exhaust temps of the Zalman, and then the Ultra. The Zalman is 41/49, the Ultra is 42/51. Although it would be nice if the Ultra had bigger heatsinks, it's not hindering it's performance. In certain cases, the Zalman only having a single low RPM fan does hurt it's performance. I've had both running an Athlon XP 3200+ in a Lian-Li PC-50, which unfortunatealy is a case that relies a great deal on the power supply for case ventilation (which is a bad idea, but I liked the smallness of the case.) Due to the lack of air-flow from the Zalman, my intake/exhaust temperatures were more like 50/80! Dead serious, the Zalman's performance was seriously affected by the excess heat and caused system instability out the ass, where the Ultra works fine, 24/7, in the exact same case simply because of better air-flow. My Zalman was probably only capable of 200W because of the heat where the Ultra may actually be capable of 300W because it's still running cooler, DESPITE lacking large heatsinks.
Also, I've had some QC issues with Zalman power supplies. Not mine personally, but others that the VAR I used to work for sold. Sure, you can DESIGN a good power supply and pay another company to make large heatsinks for you, but if you can't put the damn thing together well, what's the point? We're talking a 20% RMA rate. That's unacceptable. It's like they should get an A+ for design, but an D- for execution.
That said, I will say that the Zalman is still a better power supply IN PERFORMANCE DESIGN, though NOT in quality of build, than an Ultra because it has Active PFC and dual 12V rails. That same Zalman that wouldn't run my 3200+ in my Lian-Li does run dual Athlon MP 2800+ CPU's in a SuperMicro case with four SATA drives running RAID5 24/7 (it's the file/Exchange server at a doctor's office I do some contract IT work for.) Of course, the SuperMicro case is HUGE and has MUCH BETTER case ventilation (it has two 80MM's in the front AND back.) I'm not even sure the Ultra's 12V rail would be able to handle the load of the dual 2800+ CPU's, all of the fans and all of the drives in that beast, but it DOES work FINE in my single CPU, one hard drive rig at home.
There's a lot of things that Ultra can do to make a better power supply, but then it'll be even more expensive. Right now, it's a $60 power supply with modular cables that make it $129. To compare an Ultra to another $129 power supply like an OCZ or Antec is really apples to oranges. The Ultra doesn't have Active PFC and it doesn't have dual 12V rails. But it's not a BAD power supply because it costs more because of modular cables.
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