Testing:
To test the Ultra Products X-Finity 500W PSU with Active PFC, I installed it in a system with the following components:
» Intel Pentium D805 (2.66 GHz Dual-Core) CPU
» ECS Elitegroup C19-A SLI Pentium 4 Motherboard
» 2x 512MB OCZ GX XTC Gold PC2-5400 DDR2 EL Dual Channel Memory
» 2x BFG GeForce 6600GT OC 128MB Graphics Cards (in SLI)
» 2x Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 80GB SATA 1.5 Gbps Hard Drives (RAID 0)
» 1x Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 500GB SATA 3 Gbps Hard Drive
» Gigabyte G-Power Pro CPU Cooler
» Buslink DVD R/RW Optical Drive
Testing the Ultra Products X-Finity 500W PSU with Active PFC will be focused on determining how much the main voltage rails (+5V, +12V, and +3.3V) fluctuate from idle conditions to full load conditions. A Radio Shack multi-meter (Cat. No. 22-810) was used to monitor all voltage readings. As I have experienced before, the FlexForce cables presented an issue during testing; identifying what wires to tap in order to take the various readings. With all of the wires being silver, I had to reference another power supply to see which position on the motherboard connector would typically be red, yellow, orange, and black.
With the detective work out of the way, it was time to get down to testing. The idle condition was established by powering the base system at default speeds and voltages with no applications running for a period of at least 30 minutes.
The load condition was established by overclocking and overvolting the system, while Folding@Home and 3DMark05 ran for a period of at least 60 minutes. The CPU was overclocked from 2.66 GHz to 3.70 GHz, while the core Voltage was increased by 0.125V. The memory was also given an extra 0.3V over the idle condition to take it to 2.1V.
The first thing we will look at is how the Ultra Products X-Finity 500W PSU's voltage rails fluctuated between idle and load conditions. Values were fairly stable and bounced only slightly (generally a few hundredths of a volt), making the readings easy to record. The chart below summarizes the readings...
It may look like a huge drop on the 12V rail, but trust me, this happens on every PSU that I have connected to this overclocked D805 system. It is very power hungry! In addition to the 500W unit being tested, I have tried a 600W 2nd Generation X-Finity, a 500W Enermax Liberty, a 500W Allied brand unit, and a 450W Kingwin unit. Nothing higher than 11.78 seems possible when this system is loaded up!
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