Cooler Master UCP 900W
by Christoph Katzer on July 29, 2008 3:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
Cables and Connectors
The large mass of cables is nicely bundled up during shipping, and all are sleeved with a black mesh, including sleeving in between connectors. This can increase the cost slightly, but for those who are fanatical about having clean wiring it's a nice extra. There are a total of four 6-pin and two 8-pin PEG connectors for graphics cards on four separate cables; two of the cables have a 6-pin and 8-pin connector while the other two each have a 6-pin connector. Some users might have difficulties with using the 8-pin connectors on certain 6-pin graphics cards, but with many of the newest GPUs requiring an 8-pin and a 6-pin connector there shouldn't be any serious problems; after all, it's unlikely people running old hardware are going to go out and buy a power supplies like this.
There are a fair number of peripheral connections available on several harnesses, but the overall harness length may not be long enough for a larger chassis, as the longest harness is only 75cm. Again with the 900W rating, it seems a lot of users would be likely to have a larger case that provides for better cooling opportunities, so that's something potential buyers will want to consider. The ATX cables are 60cm and 65cm long, which should work well whether your power supply is in the traditional location or at the bottom of your chassis (like in Cooler Master's own Cosmos case). However, there are still cases where you may require longer cables, so pay attention to that area before purchasing this power supply for use in your favorite chassis.
The Fan
The Cheng Home Electronic fan branded SuperRed can be found in many of the Acbel-made power supplies from Cooler Master. It spins at up to 2000RPM, which we will see later in our tests. For a 120mm fan, that should be more than enough to cool the 900W PSU, but at maximum speed the fan does get moderately noisy.
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andlcs - Wednesday, July 30, 2008 - link
Solid polymer capacitors are ELITE brand.http://www.chinsan.com/product/index.asp?id=22">http://www.chinsan.com/product/index.asp?id=22
sheh - Tuesday, July 29, 2008 - link
20% load efficiency at is lower than 85% regardless of input voltage.strikeback03 - Tuesday, July 29, 2008 - link
IIRC they test by the ATX methodology, not the 80Plus loading, which might account for the difference.MrOblivious - Tuesday, July 29, 2008 - link
Or it could be the unit to unit variation, the different temperature, or the different load pattern, etc. ;)JarredWalton - Tuesday, July 29, 2008 - link
Definitely true. The 80Plus loading methodology differs from the standard ATX loading, and that can easily account for the 1-2% difference between what Christoph measured and what CM reports.MrOblivious - Tuesday, July 29, 2008 - link
80Plus does list what the requirements for certification on each test report (115v 60hz) and the load steps used to accomplish them. You can see the UCP report here: http://www.80plus.org/manu/psu/psu_reports/SP215_C...">http://www.80plus.org/manu/psu/psu_repo..._MASTER_...They don't list the temperature there but IIRC it is 25c (will have to check when I get home). Also, 80 Plus Silver is 85-88-85% not 82-85-82% as it seems to be indicated.
tomoyo - Tuesday, July 29, 2008 - link
I was just about to mention this as there's some misinformation on 80plus scattered about in the article. Hopefully you'll clean that up soon. To me it's a pretty big achievement to get 85-88-85 at 25C on 115V on a huge 900w psu like this one. One thing I've noticed is that some of the new low power psu models are showing extremely high low wattage efficiency such as 90-92%. Some of these include the two dell 80plus silver models and some of the new actel ones. 80plus Bronze is much easier to achieve as most 80plus psu's are already near 85% in the middle range.JarredWalton - Tuesday, July 29, 2008 - link
"80Plus Bronze requires at least 82% efficiency at 20% load, 85% efficiency at 50% load, and 82% efficiency at 100% load. 80Plus Silver bumps the requirements up to 85%/88%/85% for the same 20%/50%/100% loads. In short, the Cooler Master 900W UCP had better be able to reach 88% efficiency."I'm not sure how that's at all confusing. As to the UCP 900W actually achieving Silver in our tests, it does appear to fall just short at the 20% load mark, but only by ~1% (84% efficiency when it's supposed to be 85%). I'm not going to worry overly much on that point, as there's a certain margin of error in testing.
MrOblivious - Tuesday, July 29, 2008 - link
"Before you get too carried away with the high efficiency, however, we need to rain on your parade a bit. The 80Plus Silver badge means that most users will get at least 82% efficiency, but even 20% load represents a power output of 180W, which for an idle system represents a significant amount of high-end hardware."Since that is NOT what 80Plus Silver means it could be a bit misleading.
JarredWalton - Tuesday, July 29, 2008 - link
Ah... I see my typo. I put that paragraph in, and apparently hit a 2 instead of 5. Should be 85% there, you're right....