Introduction

With the large number of internal drives that can be installed inside of a desktop computer, the average power supply ends up with a maze of wires and connectors to provide power to hard drives, CD/DVD drives, videos cards, fans and even lights. This can make cable management inside of a computer system a severe problem because the average system probably only uses 30 to 50% of the potential cables and connectors.

Modular power supplies have been developed to try and alleviate this tangle of wires. Essentially, a modular power supply provides a series of connectors on the main power supply that users connect only the required amount of cables into. Ultra Products is one of the main proponents of this new style of power supply design with their X-Connect line.

The Power Supply

With the wide range of internal peripherals that require power from the power supply, the average power supply tends to have about six power wire groups running off of it. Each of these wire groups can have either two or three of the three primary power connectors: 4-pin Molex, 4-Pin Floppy and Serial ATA. In addition to these, there are also the main ATX power wire bundle and the additional ATX12V 4-pin wire group. This can make the task of fitting all of these wires into a mid-Tower case quite difficult.

Antec Sonata Case with Standard ATX Power Supply

Ultra Products alleviates this with the module cable design of the X-Connect. By allowing all of the cables to be plugged in individually, the user only needs to plug in as many cords as the computer system needs. This is done first by creating a series of power connectors on the main power supply. Then, a series of different style cables are provided to try and address the various connectors that users may require for their internal components.

Contents of the Ultra Products X-Connect 500W

The exterior portion of the X-Connect looks no different than a standard ATX power supply, the real difference is on the interior side of the unit. Instead of large bundles of wires hanging off the back, two connector blocks are mounted flush with the power supply case. The vertical block is the main ATX power line that runs to the motherboard. The horizontal block contains the AUX power connector, ATX12V connector and five 4-pin female Molex connectors. Each of these is covered by a small rubberized cover to prevent dust from getting into the connectors or from accidental shorts from exposed metal.

Interior Panel of the X-Connect with Power Supply Connectors

This is where one of the few minor complaints about the X-Connect power supply comes from. Many of the smaller Molex connector covers were too loose to stay over the connectors. When removing the power supply from its packaging and even tilting the unit so the covers faced down, half of them would fall off. This somewhat defeats the purpose of having the covers if they can easily be lost either outside or even inside of the computer system.

The test unit for this review came in a titanium mirror finish. This easily showed fingerprints but when clean provide a very high gloss mirror reflection. For those looking to have highly customized cases, various versions are available of the X-Connect that include a black finish, blue finish and several with UV reactive color panels.

Shielded UV Cables Under UV Light

In addition to the base power supply, the X-Connect comes with a variety of UV Reactive Shielded power cables. The standard comes with a ATX Power cable, 4-pin ATX12V power cable, 6-pin AUX power connector, two lengths of a single 4-pin Molex, one two connector 4-pin Molex cable and one Y-Cable with two 4-pin Molex connectors and a Floppy Drive connector. All of these cables glow when exposed to a UV light source. Absent are Serial ATA cables, but Ultra Products currently offers a 6-inch two Serial ATA connector Y cable that can attach to any male 4-pin Molex connector.

Serial ATA Y-Adapter

Many of the newer power supplies are trying to be sold on the basis of reducing the noise generated by the power supply. This is typically done either through larger temperature regulated fans or even reducing the number of fans available on the power supply. The X-Connect uses two temperature controlled 80mm fans that do a very good job of reducing the heat inside of the computer without generating too much noise.

Antec Sonata Case with X-Connect Power Supply

Power Specifications

Below is the power specifications table for the 500W X-Connect:

The trend in many of the latest power supplies is to provide separate power circuitry for each of the voltage rails. While this helps reduce fluctuations between the various voltage lines, many advances in the active power circuitry still allow many units that share rails to perform very well. The X-Connect does have the +3.3v and +5v lines share the same circuitry. This is evident in the specifications label with the max combined output of the two lines.

What is most interesting with the X-Connect is the amount of wattage supplied to the 12V line over the lower voltage lines. This is obviously designed to handle the increased number of peripherals that use the 12V power lines inside of the computer case. It has an amazing maximum output of 408W. The continuous maximum output for the primary voltage rails is a very sensible 480W with an additional 20W for the secondary lines.

Testing

The Ultra X-Connect is a fairly high wattage power supply. As a result, it was best tested against another power supply with a similar wattage range. The closest power supply that was previous tested is the StarTech Silent 480W power supply. Below is a table of the rest of the hardware used during the testing:

All of these testing components will not draw too heavy of a load from the power supply. As a result, I'm not able to verify the unit's actual wattage output. Instead the testing looks at the voltages supplied across the various lines to the motherboard during low and high computing usage. This lets us see how close the power supply is to the specifications and how much fluctuation there is in the lines.

Readings of the voltages were taken via the Motherboard Monitor 5 utility. Usage was tracked over a several hour period of both idle usage and heavy computing usage simulated through a series of benchmarks using SiSoft Sandra's burn-in wizard. Voltages were recorded every 30 seconds and the highest and lowest readings for each unit were taken. This was done for both the X-Connect 500W and the StarTech Silent 480W power supplies.

From testing, the Ultra X-Connect 500W power supply performs extremely well both at idle and load. Its voltage levels were closer to the specification than the StarTech unit for the +3.3v, +5v and +12v lines. Surprisingly, the X-Connect was further off for the -5v and -12v lines, but they were still within the acceptable levels. The levels of fluctuation were even tighter than those of the StarTech when under load. Based on this, the X-Connect should have no problems supplying power to pretty much any type of desktop computer system.

Conclusions

Ultra's X-Connect 500W modular power supply comes out of these tests as a highly recommended unit. The advantages of the modular cable design allow for greater flexibility in the installation of the unit into a wide range of case designs. The power and voltage levels were all very tight. Some might be concerned that the twin fans will generate too much noise, but they were consistently lower than that of the case and CPU fans. While the price range may be a bit higher than other power supplies, the flexibility of the unit and the stylish design of the unit with the UV reactive cables will appeal to the case modder crowd.

There are a few nitpicky complaints about the X-Connect unit though. Most notable is the unused connector covers that have a tendency to fall out. This could become problematic in a highly crowded case with the exposed connectors. Also, with the rise of popularity of Serial ATA hard drives, it would be nice to see a Serial ATA cable standard instead of the Y-Cable adapter cable as an add-on.