Ultra X-Finity 500W w/APFC

Ultra’s been around for a few years now. They made a big splash a few years ago with the X-Connect which brought modular cables to the masses and followed that up with Flex-Force flat cables which make cable routing a bit easier.

Today I’m taking a look at a new version of an existing Ultra PSU, the X-Finity 500W with APFC. It’s bigger, it’s black and it sports a honkin’ big 135mm fan not to mention a bit of an internal difference to set it apart from the rest of the crowd.

The packaging lists an outline of the features of the 500 APFC, no double talk, no fancy names just straight forward specs and features. Being a tech-head I love packaging like this, no B.S. just the facts.

The specs for the wattage are also listed on the packaging, this makes it easy to judge what you’re dealing with. They don’t tell the interesting fact that I found by opening up the package and reading the manual though but more on this later.

The packaging is basic, no confetti, no flashing lights, just a PSU wrapped in a plastic bag with closed cell end caps to hold it in place.

Inside the package there’s the PSU, power cord, pack of screws and the manual (not pictured). Sorry but I was busy reading it and did I ever come away impressed. I found it to be very thorough in that it outlined the number of connectors and where each draws it’s power from. For those of you that are in the know on a split rail PSU 12V1 feeds the mobo, PCI-e and drive connectors and 12V2 feeds everything else meaning the CPU core(s). This means that on this PSU you’d have two power hungry PCI-e cards competing for power along with drives, fans, lighting and the mobo from a single 16A (under full loading of both 12V rails or 18A on cross loaded rails) rail and the CPU using 7A or 8A of the other rail. This isn’t a wise move as it truly limits the power that can really be drawn from the PSU and hurts it when you’re using a pair of big cards on it.