Originally posted by: myocardia
...is no longer trumpeting those X-Connects/X-Finity's (the X-Finity's are the replacements for the X-Connects, from what I can tell). Ultra makes some good psu's now, but the X-Finity's still aren't one of them (though I hope that they at least changed OEM's for their cheaper psu's).
When Ultra tried to find someone to make the X-Connect, they couldn't find an OEM willing to make a modular power supply. Ultra even solicited Antec with the idea, hoping that they would somehow "sub-contract" the production with one of their OEM's (Ultra by Antec, I suppose.) Antec shot down the idea saying it would never take off. I suppose they had a change of heart shortly their after because Antec came out with the NeoPower modular power supply the same year the X-Connect was introduced.
Ultra finally found an OEM that would manufacture their power supplies: Youngyear. The Youngyear product wasn't too bad at first and reviewed quite well.
Meanwhile, Ultra was starting to get the X-Connect into Europe. After seeing the success of the X-Connect and other modular power supplies in the U.S., their usual OEM, Wintech, was a bit more willing to produce modular power supplies. They produced a 230V only APFC X-Connect for the European market.
After the first production run of Youngyear built X-Connects was sold out, Youngyear was approached and asked to make another run of the "titanium colored" (that high luster chrome out sold every other color 2 to 1) product, but at a better price. Apparently Youngyear came back with a better price, but unbenounced to Ultra, also came back with a significantly worse product.
Meanwhile, Ultra found that their initial order to Wintech for units for Europe was more than Europe could sell, so they took a few of the units back to the factory and had the APFC removed so it could run on 115V. These are the Ultra X-Connect units with the "ULT-33" part number. Youngyear units in the U.S. all had "ULT-31" part numbers.
About this time Ultra decided to go back to the drawing board and improve the X-Connect with a larger fan and different cables. This became the "X2." This unit was built by Wintech because Ultra learned their lesson with Youngyear (I personally thought Ultra should have sued Youngyear for the cost of the second production run and damages.
Now this is where I came in... Ultra knew I was reviewing PSU's for SL Central and a guy I used to work with at TCWO was now working for a sales rep for Ultra. They wanted me to look at their new X2 800W power supply before it went to market. This was around the time of CES and I was going to be in Taiwan any ways, so I stopped by the Ultra offices in Taipei and played with the Wintech based 800W on their Chroma.
It was as underwhelming as I would have expected from Wintech. It did 800W at room temperature, but the efficiency was hard pressed to get to reach 80%, there was no PFC and it was group regulated so it would crossload easily. I suggested they look at other OEM's.
Based on my experience with reviewing the Sunbeam, Hiper and Aerocool product and knowing that they could make a good quality product for little money, I suggested they give Andyson a look. It just so happened that the owner of Andyson was a cousin of the owner of Wintech and that Andyson was currently working on a high efficiency unit in the 500W and 600W range. Problem was, Ultra didn't need anything in this range as they still had X2's to sell through, but after I shot down their Wintech based 800W, they looked to Andyson to make the X-Pro and X-Finity 800W. The unit could not be made modular because the un-modified design required two 80MM fans for cooling.
Unfortunately, Ultra found that Andyson could be rather slow at times, and not having anything in the market greater than 550W was putting them behind the pack. At this time I had remembered my friend Madmat from Techgage reviewing the XG Duro 900W, which was built by SevenTeam. Although the unit was actually a 750W PSU, it could actually do 900W peak at room temperature. Impressive... and it just so happened that MGE mysteriously disappeared from the face of the map shortly after the review. So I suggested Ultra have a look at just slapping an Ultra label on whatever 750W power supplies SevenTeam had laying around. This became the X-Pro 750. Around the same time these became ready to sell, Andyson had their 800W ready for Ultra.
From that time forward, Ultra had been using Andyson for all of their better units. X3, X-Finity and X-Pro. Wintech had been reduced to a manufacture of V-Series and VXS power supplies, although not all V-Series and XVS power supplies are Wintech. Power supplies that come included inside cases are actually built by a former Wintech engineer working at Yue-Lin and uses Wintech's UL # with permission from Wintech and the UL.
X-Finity used to be the name Ultra used for ALL of their retail power supplies, even before there was an X-Connect. Later, the name was re-used to desribe non-modular units with FlexForce cables. These units were all made by Wintech until the 800W. AFAIK, the 800W is the only X-Finity to not be made by Wintech and is the last X-Finity to make it on the market. X-Pro was the brand introduced to describe power supplies with fully sleeved cables, power supplies that in the past, before there were FlexForce cables were actually called "X-Finity." All X-Pro power supplies are made by Andyson except for the handful of SevenTeam based 750W units floating around.
)
Facebook
Twitter