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ultra power supplies..

itsukisama

itsukisama

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 28, 2008
Messages
304
its official.. ultra ps's suck.. lol.. I bought the 550w x2 connect and the 5v rail blew up when i was gaming. They give me another ps thru their lifetime RMA which they gave me an xpro 750w. It was DOA. lol. My friends x2's fan went out a week after i RMA mine lol. Ultra has good customer service. Lifetime warranty is nice.. but when u have to RMA every once in awhie.. its just annoying..
 
When i had my x2, the fan took a dump on me, so i put yate loon in there and let her roll.
Other than that, it was a good power supply.
 
lol sorry guys didn't mean the confusion..

I had a Ultra 550watt X-2 Connect
They replaced me it with a X-PRO 750watt.
The replacment was DOA.
The funny part when they asked me about different replacments for the initial 550watt they tried to give me a power pc ps which isn't even theirs lol.
 
The X-Pro 750w was a limited item when I reviewed it over a year ago. Odd they still had any.
 
I have only had one Ultra PSU in my life and it worked fine for the six months or so I used it. I guess I was lucky as I have heard nothing but bad things about them. That's actually why I switched it out after six months.
 
I've got good news from a PSU vendor, that Ultra has totally abandoned their previous ODM providers Young Year and Wintech. Maybe this means that they've totally turned to Andyson, and units made by Young Year or Wintech like 550W X2 Connect are just leftovers. I've no idea at all why JonnyGuru used to give good comments on those Wintech-made units.
 
TravisCHEN said:
I've got good news from a PSU vendor, that Ultra has totally abandoned their previous ODM providers Young Year and Wintech. Maybe this means that they've totally turned to Andyson, and units made by Young Year or Wintech like 550W X2 Connect are just leftovers. I've no idea at all why JonnyGuru used to give good comments on those Wintech-made units.
Click to expand...

I'm taking my "JonGerow" hat off and putting the "jonnyGURU" hat back on.....

Are you daft?

First off, X2 was never made by Youngyear. Only the very first X-Connects were. The X2's were ALWAYS made by Wintech (much better than Youngyear).

And when they abandoned Youngyear, they did so three years ago. They NEVER abandoned Wintech and as far as I recall the Wintech built X2 was a current product up until 6 months ago!

I'm the one that actually persuaded them to go to SevenTeam for the X-Pro 750W and then Andyson for the X3 units! That was TWO YEARS AGO.

When I would say good things about Ultra power supplies, I said good things about the X3 and X-Pro power supplies because they were good... they still are! I never told anyone to run out and buy a Wintech based one. I would only comment that they're "acceptable", which in most cases they are. One could do a lot worse, but if you look at Wintech built Ultra's I reviewed in the past, they would only score 5's or 6's.

After I went to work for BFG, they went actually went back to Wintech for the X2 750W and that's the one that Paul reviewed here that did so miserably. That was only SIX MONTHS AGO! And the V-Series, XVS and Lifetime Series were always and still are all made by either Wintech or Yue-Lin. Neither of which are as "top-tier" as SevenTeam and Andyson, none of which I would "give good comments too".

Seriously, you and your "PSU vendor" need to check your timelines, your quotes and keep track of who makes what and when it was made. Because your time line is all F'd up. It sounds like he's being a line of crap and that line of crap is in turn being fed to you.
 
JonGerow said:
I'm taking my "JonGerow" hat off and putting the "jonnyGURU" hat back on.....

Are you daft?

First off, X2 was never made by Youngyear. Only the very first X-Connects were. The X2's were ALWAYS made by Wintech (much better than Youngyear).

And when they abandoned Youngyear, they did so three years ago. They NEVER abandoned Wintech and as far as I recall the Wintech built X2 was a current product up until 6 months ago!

I'm the one that actually persuaded them to go to SevenTeam for the X-Pro 750W and then Andyson for the X3 units! That was TWO YEARS AGO.

When I would say good things about Ultra power supplies, I said good things about the X3 and X-Pro power supplies because they were good... they still are! I never told anyone to run out and buy a Wintech based one. I would only comment that they're "acceptable", which in most cases they are. One could do a lot worse, but if you look at Wintech built Ultra's I reviewed in the past, they would only score 5's or 6's.

After I went to work for BFG, they went actually went back to Wintech for the X2 750W and that's the one that Paul reviewed here that did so miserably. That was only SIX MONTHS AGO! And the V-Series, XVS and Lifetime Series were always and still are all made by either Wintech or Yue-Lin. Neither of which are as "top-tier" as SevenTeam and Andyson, none of which I would "give good comments too".

Seriously, you and your "PSU vendor" need to check your timelines, your quotes and keep track of who makes what and when it was made. Because your time line is all F'd up. It sounds like he's being a line of crap and that line of crap is in turn being fed to you.
Click to expand...
Well Jon, that's a mixed bag of both good and bad news.
The good news is Ultra "did" turn to SevenTeam for a good ST-750EAJ unit. The bad news is that, they kept the Wintech or Yue-Lin-made products. (These two are just so similar)
If Ultra has turned away from Wintech or Yue-Lin, I would be happy to hear that. Now I know I overestimated its quality. I simply received the message from this guy(ylq0917) who's selling Andyson units, and he said "Young Year was abandoned 2 years ago because of quality issues, and Wintech has also stopped production for the same reason."
http://bbs.ocer.net/thread-210531-1-1.html
I regard what sellers say as "no facts, only clues". You may reach some interesting facts after they open their mouths, but that isn't directly from what they say.

As for Andyson, it's a mixture of excellent performance (most of the time) and extremely bad soldering. What's interesting is that some guys from we.pcinlife.com (a large Chinese HW forum) were persuaded to buy the Ultra X3 1KWs, and after they received the units and released the screws to see what was inside, they just got shocked by the poor solderings that were just unbelievable on a 1KW unit. The consequence was accusations against the poor guy who brought them from USA(maybe the Andyson factory in China, though). I think Andyson should have some improvement on building quality.
 
As for "good comment", I've got a wrong impression. I've digged into a 3-year-old thread about Ultra units, in which I thought Jon gave good comments like "I had no problems using my Ultra X-xx to pull ..blabla", and I saw it was actually another guy saying this. Jon's comments were close to "Wintech-made is acceptable". So I apologize to Jon for misunderstanding his position.

I hate to say I "admire" anyone, but if there are some guys who I really admire then I must count Jonny in. In fact the way I see PSUs are almost all learned from his jonny site, and sometimes I use his test result as evidence to evaluate PSUs. So I think it's ridiculous to have controversy about a "Wintech" factory, which I hardly pay any attention to.

Well, I don't care how's Wintech going right now, but I do notice that the agent of AcBel Polytech in China is now selling Wintech units under a "second Brand of AcBel" called the "AFocus".
Here's a shot of the AFocus unit.
http://www.jlit365.com/html/20083/20083298958.html
http://www.it918.com/htm/01_dy/2008/0423/189216.shtml

If you can read Chinese you can see everyone telling you that "this unit is made by AcBel, and AFocus is a sub-brand of AcBel" (ASrock and ASUStek? huh) , everyone who sells AcBel sells AFocus at the same time, sometimes telling you it's a "AcBel F1-400", and it's marking really looks like AcBel's, apart from the "WIN-300XPX-X" product number showing it's real ODM.

What do you think about that "AFocus"?
 
TravisCHEN said:
As for Andyson, it's a mixture of excellent performance (most of the time) and extremely bad soldering.
Click to expand...

That has not been my experience... the Hiper I reviewed was fine, as was the AD-MT8 engineering sample I blew up with my own bad soldering (I used the SMD heat gun on it because the 60W iron couldn't do the trick).
 
Hmm...See my setup and note that a lousy 500W PSU is driving that with no complaint at all (it's also driven 3 systems I've built before for myself over the past 5 years). Maybe I just got lucky or some others got unlucky?
 
Oklahoma Wolf said:
That has not been my experience... the Hiper I reviewed was fine, as was the AD-MT8 engineering sample I blew up with my own bad soldering (I used the SMD heat gun on it because the 60W iron couldn't do the trick).
Click to expand...

Well the clumpy solder on the back of the PCB looked messy, and that's one reason why I don't like Andyson. I remember X-bit or some site showed a similar photo of a dirty backside.

Maybe I'm just nit-picking it with a Mobo criterion.
 
TravisCHEN said:
Well the clumpy solder on the back of the PCB looked messy, and that's one reason why I don't like Andyson. I remember X-bit or some site showed a similar photo of a dirty backside.

Maybe I'm just nit-picking it with a Mobo criterion.
Click to expand...

Well, you have to realize that A LOT of that soldering is done by hand. There are some 100% machine built units out there, and those all look perfect. Hand soldered units are going to look different unit to unit. If the solder is blobbed on, ok... does it short out anywhere? Does the solder cross traces? no.. Then it's just aesthetics really.
 
JonGerow said:
Well, you have to realize that A LOT of that soldering is done by hand. There are some 100% machine built units out there, and those all look perfect. Hand soldered units are going to look different unit to unit. If the solder is blobbed on, ok... does it short out anywhere? Does the solder cross traces? no.. Then it's just aesthetics really.
Click to expand...

In power supplies tin solder attached to the traces is to improve the conductivity on rails with large current flowing thru. So plumpy solder is not as dangerous as a diode/transformer not firmly placed, as long as it doesn't cause short circuit between traces. I don't care about aesthetics THAT much but I think that popular PSU-maker Andyson should at least catch up with the popular CWT on soldering.I'm not saying "CWT's building is without a blot" though. I don't blame Andyson for their soldering because I don't ever consider buying their products, but others may think "Hey I'm paying $xxx for a 1KW units and you're selling me solders?" and thus disqualify that good unit. The Kilowatt-fans in PCinlife.com did have controversy on whether Ultra is a kludge because of that reason. What a pity.
 
Well.. in the case of some Enermax and Topower units, yes. I know what you mean. I see the "plumpy solder" all of the time. Some people complain that it looks bad, but I know it's there for a reason.

But as far as the "quality control" aspect: take Topower for example. They have some +5VSB transformers that have one leg longer than the other. They don't catch it and trim it so they stick the legs through the board, they float it in the solder and what's the end result?... +5VSB transformer is sitting at a 10% grade. Does it effect performance? No. Life? No. Looks stupid? Yes.

There's things to concern yourself with and things that shouldn't really matter. For example, if I had a transformer that was so heavy that it was bowing the PCB... THAT is a problem. If I had a wire that had it's insulation stripped back so far prior to soldering that it could touch another conductor, THAT is a problem. My capacitor is .5mm up on one leg? Meh...

Right now, Andyson's RMA rate is as low as anyone else's. Plumpy solder, crooked components or not. I'll take 'em. Is Ultra a kludge because of Andyson? No way. As long as the product performs as advertised, looks good, does what it's supposed to do... MOST people aren't opening up their PSU's to make sure the solder is clean and components are straight. Is Ultra a kludge because of the stuff they've had built by Youngyear and Wintech? Sure.

Certainly Andyson is 10 times better than Wintech and you have to admit that Wintech builds often look pretty darn "clean" and tidy... but they use very cheap parts and over-spec almost everything. :( I'll take a properly engineered unit that's built within tolerances over a polished turd any day of the week. I mean, some of these cheap power supplies look good, but it's like putting a bum in a suit.
 
I have a question, Tigerdirect currently has the Microfly BX-6 on sale for $59.99 and with shipping it winds up being $74.00 or so... issue is that it includes an XVS 600w PSU. I am going to be using it with a Pentium 630, 2gb of ram and an 8600GT card... should I be looking for a new PSU or will this one be okay to just use with my system? I have no intentions of overclocking or gaming on it since it is for my wife to use.
 
JonGerow said:
But as far as the "quality control" aspect: take Topower for example. They have some +5VSB transformers that have one leg longer than the other. They don't catch it and trim it so they stick the legs through the board, they float it in the solder and what's the end result?... +5VSB transformer is sitting at a 10% grade. Does it effect performance? No. Life? No. Looks stupid? Yes.

...
Certainly Andyson is 10 times better than Wintech and you have to admit that Wintech builds often look pretty darn "clean" and tidy... but they use very cheap parts and over-spec almost everything. :( I'll take a properly engineered unit that's built within tolerances over a polished turd any day of the week. I mean, some of these cheap power supplies look good, but it's like putting a bum in a suit.
Click to expand...

Do you think Wintech builds look pretty "clean" and tidy? Well the Huntkey Green Stars are much "tidier" in that way. I mean seriously, I don't think Wintech's build is tidy. Of course components are in their right place but... Well forget about Win- and Hun- PSUs.

Speaking of RMA rate, I don't think Huntkey has trouble with its RMA rates despite their bad habit of adding 100W to max. output(in fact Huntkey is always emphasizing "true rated power" concept here in China) and using disqualified cheap transistors and Schottky-rectifiers. RMA is that weird, because users seldom have trouble with a PSU not capable of delivering its rated power, but they do have trouble with a PSU dying under line voltage transcients, overheated caps, .etc. I think this is "the way Huntkey/Wintech is meant to be played".

Something a bit away from the topic though. What really got me interested is that funny "AFocus". It's becoming the best-seller around here!
 
KrylonArt said:
I have a question, Tigerdirect currently has the Microfly BX-6 on sale for $59.99 and with shipping it winds up being $74.00 or so... issue is that it includes an XVS 600w PSU. I am going to be using it with a Pentium 630, 2gb of ram and an 8600GT card... should I be looking for a new PSU or will this one be okay to just use with my system? I have no intentions of overclocking or gaming on it since it is for my wife to use.
Click to expand...

You'd better stay away from Wintech and Yue-Lin units IMO.
I'm not saying Win/Yue will burn your house down or make your wife pregnant, but a cheap unit from a small maker boasting its output capacity is nothing safe and should always be avoided.

You can pay <$40 for a CoolerMaster eXtreme Power Pro "460W"(420W in fact), it can pull your machine, and it's a cheap but safe product from the good old AcBel Polytech, more than 100 times better than these two mentioned.
 
TravisCHEN said:
Do you think Wintech builds look pretty "clean" and tidy? Well the Huntkey Green Stars are much "tidier" in that way.
Click to expand...

EXACTLY. Huntkey's look pretty tidy inside... well... unless they use the "scrap metal heatsinks" like Paul found in the Rocketfish, but is it BETTER? No.

And no, Huntkey doesn't really have RMA issues. They claim they're less than 0.5% in a year and I kind of believe that. Fact is, most people don't push their Dynex or Rocketfish PSU's to the point of destruction, so most don't die. If someone overloads one by using it with an SLI system, it just stops working and the person buys something else knowing that they probably overloaded the PSU. Most don't blow up and take other parts with it.
 
So... How about that X-Pro? First time I've heard of one of the X-Pro 750W's as being DOA.....
 
I saw a SevenTeam ST-750EAJ fail when pulling up two XFX G80-Ultras. Can't remember the detailed system setup...
So there may be a defect in this ST unit causing probable failure when +12V was heavily loaded. I'm not sure because I've no other clues.
It is an EPS unit, though.
 
My opinion of Seventeam's build quality on the big units has been dropping lately, as lots of folks will be finding out when my ultra crazy review for jonnyGURU.com on Monday goes live ;)
 
Oklahoma Wolf said:
My opinion of Seventeam's build quality on the big units has been dropping lately, as lots of folks will be finding out when my ultra crazy review for jonnyGURU.com on Monday goes live ;)
Click to expand...

I think you've already reviewed the 1KW OP1000 and the 1200W Seventeam unit. The recent ST-550P-AM reviewed was no a big unit. What more crazy things can you do? Baking a PSU in 60 degree hot box?
If ST knows they're giving samples to some reviewer "against them" what would they do next? We'll just wait til next Monday. :D

ps: Just can't wait to see the review on Silverstone ZU1200M/ZM1200M Impervio-made "Etasis-like" units. Hope you guys out there have a look on them soon.
 
I haven't reviewed the OP1000. I do have the Seventeam 1kW version of that in the pile. Monday's unit is a ST-1200Z-AF - the modular version of the 1200W I did in December.

I have a ZU1200M waiting for review as well.
 
TravisCHEN said:
I saw a SevenTeam ST-750EAJ fail when pulling up two XFX G80-Ultras. Can't remember the detailed system setup...
So there may be a defect in this ST unit causing probable failure when +12V was heavily loaded. I'm not sure because I've no other clues.
It is an EPS unit, though.
Click to expand...

Probably because the "stock" ST-750EAJ is a server PSU with rails split up to follow EPS12V specification. That's one of the reasons Ultra went with single-ailing that particular unit; to avoid issues with the rail division without having to re-map the connectors.
 
I can't agree more. I think EPS-style connector distribution is the cause.
That ST-750EAJ was sold by XFX as a bundle with two G80 video cards. I don't know if XFX had asked ST to loose OCP or re-map the connectors though.
 
Oklahoma Wolf said:
I haven't reviewed the OP1000. I do have the Seventeam 1kW version of that in the pile. Monday's unit is a ST-1200Z-AF - the modular version of the 1200W I did in December.

I have a ZU1200M waiting for review as well.
Click to expand...
So that ST-1200Z-AF is similar to SST-DA1200. Maybe semi-modularized.
OP1000 was reviewed by jonny in his 1KW shootout between OP1000 and PCP&C 1KW-SR.

And for ZU1200M... I'll just wait and see. Any known issues on it right now? This DC-DC design is to have a perfect performance under dynamic load and a good efficiency number. Because it's from Impervio, made for SilverStone and its predecessor is Etasis EPAP-750, there's no way it could disappoint us.

ps: Hey that's unfair! You guys cook so MANY cool units there, while I can't even catch a cable. I can't even get a review sample from FSP, though GreenPower 400W costs no more than $45 here in Beijing. These PSU makers think little of market impress in China.
 
TravisCHEN said:
I can't agree more. I think EPS-style connector distribution is the cause.
That ST-750EAJ was sold by XFX as a bundle with two G80 video cards. I don't know if XFX had asked ST to loose OCP or re-map the connectors though.
Click to expand...

If it was SevenTeam branded with the ST-750EAJ part number, I doubt it.
 
Yeah.. that's an off the shelf ST-750EAJ. IIRC, all four of those PCIe connectors are on the same +12V rail.
 
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