As you can see the PSU is packaged and protected rather well, with the cables neatly stored in a separate foam compartment to the PSU.

One of the things that struck me about the power cord on the 1100W UCP was how thick it was. You can see a normal one on the right, and the UCP on the left. It looks like the 1100W’s of power are going to take some juice from the wall.

Here we have the UCP 1100W out of the packaging. The cable length on the connectors is quite generous, but unfortunately the PSU is not modular, so it means that there are a ridiculous amount of wires to hide if you are not using them all.

The finish on the PSU is a rough matt black and lends to quite an industrial look for the PSU. The side of the PSU is labelled Ultimate; and with the amount of power this PSU can supply you have to admit that it is pretty ultimate indeed.

Here we have the wattage rating label for the PSU, as you can see on the specifications page, up to 1000W of the 1100W that this PSU can supply can be drawn from the 12v rails. That is a seriously beefy amount of 12v power. The UL number indicates that this PSU has been made by Cooler Master, although I suspect it is probably made by AcBel.

The mesh covers the whole end of the PSU and will let plenty of air to escape lending to a cooler (and quieter) PSU. The light under the switch remains off during normal operation but will light up indicating when any one of the numerous protection circuits has been triggered. Note the plug socket on the PSU is non-standard and will not let you plug anything but the thick power cable supplied with the cooler in to the PSU.

The top of the PSU (or bottom depending on how you look at it) has a 120mm fan installed behind some more honeycomb mesh. The fan is attached in a strange way (as opposed to regular screws) with the corners around the mesh being recessed and large circular headed bolts passing through the whole of the fan.

Cables included with the PSU are:

• 1x 24pin connector
• 2x CPU 4pin+4pin connector
• 3x PCIe 8pin connector
• 6x PCIe 6pin connector
• 5x Molex connector
• 9x SATA connector
• 1x Floppy connector

The connectors supplied with the PSU are fairly exhaustive and cover pretty much everything a high end system could need. They have a generous amount of cable length, so you shouldn’t have any problems connecting cables on the far side of the case/motherboard.

Next Page – Installation and Testing

<<< Previous page | Next page >>>