Cooler Master UCP Series 900 Watt Power Supply

Cooler Master has been offering power supplies for a couple of years now and the quality of their products has improved over time.  They are famous for their enclosures and heat sinks. With the UCP series, Cooler Master is now offering a line of premium power supplies that feature the latest in power output, efficiency and looks. Today, we are going to examine the UCP 900 Watt.  The 900 watt version is the second most powerful in the UCP series.  There are three models, the 700 watt, 900 watt and the 1100 watt.  A great feature of this power supply is that it is 80Plus Silver certified, which is currently quite rare in PC power supplies.  According to the 80Plus test report, its typical efficiency is around 88 percent!

Upon opening the box, you will find the manual, a seemingly pointless CD with a similar manual on it, screws, a unique 14AWG rated power cable, and a warranty card.  The power cable is unique, featuring an IEC 320 C19/C20 Socket and Plug.  This is done because the power cable can now support up to 16 Amps.  Users should be careful as to not lose to cable and to always bring it with them when transporting their computer.  A replacement can be expensive and hard to find.

Here are some of the main features and specifications from Cooler Master's Website:

The Power Supply:

The power supply features a rough textured metallic black colored housing and fan grill, which looks unique and is a welcome change.

The side is also imprinted with the word 'Ultimate' featured on both sides.  This is clearly visible if you are using a case with a built-in window.

Looking at the top of the power supply, there is a Cooler Master label with their logo on it, the model number and a condensed specification list.  Note that there are four +12v rails with the +12v1 supplying up to 25 Amps, the +12v2 supplying up to 20 Amps, and the +12v3, +12v4 providing up to 22 Amps.  The 3.3v supplies up to 25 Amps and the +5v supplies up to 25 Amps. The efficiency is 80 percent or greater at 20%, 50% and 100% loads.

There is an large grill on the back which allows the 120 mm fan to exhaust hot air, an on/off switch and AC Power Input. *Note the unique arrangement of the prongs in the power cable connector.  This power supply does feature Active PFC, so there is no need for a  switch to select the input voltage.  A white LED light also indicates if there is a power issue or an internal failure when it is lit up.

A simulated OCP/OVP/Short Circuit scenario activates this LED

This power supply features the following cables:

This power supply is not modular and has tons of long cables exiting the rear of it.   Cooler Master should include some velcro straps or zip ties or make a modular version of this power supply.  The cabling got a little messy inside of the test case.

-A 24-pin ATX power connector

-A 4/8-pin +12v CPU/EPS Power Connector

-2x  6+2-Pin and 4x 6-pin PCI-Express Power Connectors.

-5x Molex Power Connectors

-9x Serial ATA Power Connectors

-1x Floppy Power Connector

Cooling:

There is a 120mm fan on the bottom of this power supply.  During testing, at idle loads, this fan is quiet, which is a great characteristic considering that this is a 900 watt power supply.  Other equivalent power supply brands I have tested had fairly noisy fans at idle loads.   I'm impressed! With loads, the fan sped up a little bit, making a small whirring sound.  The noise was still acceptable.

Inside the Power Supply:

* Taking this power supply apart will void the warranty.

Inside the power supply,  there are two large finned heat sinks to cool down the voltage rectifiers.  The main transformer is on the upper right, while the smaller transformer is hidden near the upper left of the image.  The primary capacitors are both (1x) Nippon Chemicon and (2x) Hitachi branded (both 85c rated), while the secondary capacitors are Ltec branded.  An interesting feature of this power supply is its soft-start circuitry.  When the power supply starts up, there is a faint clicking sound.  The same happens when it is powered off.  This power supply appears to be built by AcBel and is nearly identical in looks and completely identical in performance to AcBel's own PC7052 900 Watt power supply.  AcBel manufactures most of Cooler Master's power supply line up. 

The Primary capacitors are both Nippon-Chemicon and Hitachi branded and rated for up to 85c.

The secondary capacitors are Ltec branded.

The fan inside is a SuperRed branded fan. It has the model number CHB12012BS(E) with a maximum draw of 0.26 AMPs.

Testing:

For this power supply, the test system consists of the following:

-Antec Nine Hundred Case

-Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Quad Core Processor @ 3.4 GHz (1.4v)

-ZeroTherm Nirvana 120 Heatsink

-eVGA nForce 680i SLi Motherboard

-4GB (2GB x 2) of OCZ Platinum DDRII-1066 Memory

-320GB x 4 Western Digital 7200RPM 16MB Cache Hard Drives

-2x nVIDIA GeForce 8800GTS (G92) Video Cards @ 715MHz Core / 1000 MHz Memory

-Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 Digital Sound Card

-Asus 16x DVD-RAM / 18x Samsung DVD-RAM Drives

-4x 120MM fans, 1x 200mm fan

-2x CCFL Lights

(Multimeter Results)

*For additional / larger pictures of the Cooler Master UCP 900 Watt, Click Here

*Voltages are at a 'Max Load' for a typical gaming computer, running Orthos, Sisoft Sandra Hard Drive benchmark and 3DMark06 CPU Test 1 and 2 / Deep Freeze HDR test, and read with a Multi-Meter.

Capacitor Brands:

Primary: Excellent (although all primary caps are only rated up to 85 degrees celcius)

Secondary: Good

Primary: Hitachi and Nippon-Chemicon

Secondary: Ltec

Voltage Results:

+The results were excellent for this power supply, the results being well within range.  The voltages barely budged when transitioning from an idle state to a load state.  Impressive!

Stability Results:

+Everything ran fine during testing, the system was stable and performed the tests as expected. 

Fan Speed Impressions:

+During the tests, the fan speed did not vary much, being nearly silent in idle mode and only producing a slight whirr with loads.  Great, I'm impressed!

Installation:

+/- Installation of this power supply went well.  No issues fitting inside the test system's case, although it was a little bit cramped due to the slightly longer enclosure that this power supply uses. Zip ties and velcro straps would have been very helpful, but they were not included.  It should have been included for such a pricey power supply.

Conclusion:

This power supply would be ideal for anyone looking to build beefy multi core gaming / workstation system with two or more video cards.  It is SLi Certified for up to two nVidia GeForce 8800 Ultra's, which is great.  I'm sure that this power supply can handle the newer GeForce's in SLi as well.  It also has an abundance of power cables and more than enough PCI-e power connectors for running multiple graphics cards. The fan is also quiet and is great to find in a 900 watt class power supply. At around $280, this power supply is quite expensive for what it offers.  Antec's 1000 watt TruePower Quattro is priced at around $200.  Overall, this is an excellent power supply and should be purchased by anyone looking for high efficiency, amazing output performance, and great build quality.

Pros +

-Excellent power output

-Abundance of power connectors

-Five Year Warranty

-Fan is quiet at typical loads

Cons -

-Expensive

-Non-Modular

-AC Power Cable is somewhat unique and is hard to replace

Techaddicts.net would like to give this power supply the Highly Recommended rating!

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