CoolerMaster UCP 1100 PSU Evaluation

In the past few years, many companies have been reinventing themselves. Making the attempt at going from entry level to high performance manufacturer all in an attempt at the gamer and enthusiasts wallet and seemingly never ending desire to buy whatever is the newest or best. CoolerMaster is one of these companies. They have moved away from boring cases and lackluster cooling products into a new realm of enthusiast aimed products. One of these is their new UCP (Ultimate Circuit Protection), which CoolerMaster says offers 88% efficiency. Will this be the PSU of choice? Or just more words printed on a box?

Product: CoolerMaster UCP 1100      
Author: Sean Kalinich
Reviewed on: August 9th 2008
Product cost: $349.99 (MSRP)
Manufacturer: CoolerMaster
Spelling and Grammatical editor: Planetx64 Staff

{mospagebreak title=Packaging and Features}
Packaging and Features:
The UCP 1100 arrived in a large box, much bigger than I was expecting. The outside has the usual images and descriptions, including the obligatory specifications table. Here is where things get a little different. The first one that grabbed my eye was the 100,000 hour MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures) this means that on average you should be able to run this PSU for 100,000 hours before having a failure of the system. For those of you not doing the math at home this is 4166.67 days or, 592.24 weeks or, 11.45 years. Not too shabby considering most PSUs have a MTBF of about 50-60,000 hours.  Now you may find a few that claim 100k MTBF but if you look closely you will see that the operational temp that you get that life span at is 25c or lower. CoolerMaster is claiming a 100k MTBF at 40c this is a more realistic number than the 25c range other companies are pushing.

The next thing that caught my eye was the 88% efficiency range. At a time when the goal is 80 CoolerMaster seems to be pushing for an even higher number.
One other nice feature CoolerMaster have thrown in is a handy selection of PCI-e connections; there are three PCI-e connectors that are both 8 and 6-pin. Instead of having a 2-pin add on they have individual 8 and 6-pin connectors on the line. The other three are 6-pin only.

But these are not the only things that stand out, CoolerMaster boast a few other goodies as well. Including:
Japanese Capacitors as well as Solid Capacitors
VRM(Voltage Regulation Module) Circuit offers high efficiency and Power density.
Independent VRMs for 5 and 3.3 Rails
Compliance with the newest Intel standard ATX 12V V2.3
Compliance with the newest SSI standard EPS 12V V2.92
Ultra-silent operation with intelligent 120mm fan speed control
Eco-design for energy and money saving by Active PFC.(>0.9) / high efficiency(>88%)
Power Failure Detector will light up when OVP /OCP / OPP / SCP / UVP /OTP occur
Soft-start circuit A protection mechanism that limits the input inrush current by delaying the actual power-on of the PSU to prevent damage to it.
Green mode PFC control circuit by intelligent PWM power conversion
By using a single 12V switching circuit design you get a more efficient AC to DC conversion which leads to an overall more efficient PSU

Specifications are as follows:

{mospagebreak title=Construction}
Construction:
The UCP 1100 is put together a little different than many PSUs out on the market today. Instead of the high gloss (and finger print magnet) surfaces or most CoolerMaster opted for a more rugged textured surface that not only prevents fingerprints and oil accumulation but also resists scratches and nicks.
The down side of this is that the PSU appears to be made of plastic to the casual glance. Once you get over that worry the UCP has a very rugged appearance and the large block letters “Ultimate” on the sides (they have rotated the label so that no matter how you mount it the word “Ultimate” will appear right side up on the left side.) give the UCP 1100 a very industrial look. Taking off the outer cover reveals a cleanly laid out interior. The majority of the wires usually strewn about the inside of a PSU are all carefully run along one side or run so as to be out of the way of the two rows of heatsinks covering the power regulators.  These are cooled by a large 120mm fan that during operation is almost silent. While inside the V8 system I was unable to hear it over the other fans in use, while outside the V8 the only noise was a slight sound of air movement caused by the blades of the fan.

Connectors, here I think is the only downside to the way CoolerMaster put the UCP 1100 together. Instead of opting for a modular setup they went with the traditional design and have all cables laid out in one large (almost 3” in diameter) bundle. This makes for a lot of cable management even in a system like the V8 I used. With the six PCI-e power cables you are more than likely going to have at least four of these to tuck out of the way. The other although less important issue is that CoolerMaster decided to use a different pin layout for the power cable to From the PSU to the Wall. The shape of the connector is rectangular and the pins are now horizontal, this means you cannot use a standard cord with this PSU. Other than these two annoying stumbles CoolerMaster have done a great job with the UCP 1100s design and construction.

{mospagebreak title=Performance} Performance:
There is no good way to test a PSU without a Load tester and an Oscilloscope, But as these products can run into the tens of thousands of dollars I was not able to test the UCP 1100 with them. Instead I tried to find the most efficient way to test normal usage (at normal ambient temperatures) to see if there is Voltage Droop, of if there is excessive power draw from the wall.
To test for voltage and amperage droop I borrowed three Fluke 87V Digital Multimeters and connected them to the 12v, 5v and 3.3v lines. Next I placed a P3 Kill A Watt wattmeter inline to test power draw from the wall.
After I had my test gear I needed to come up with methods for testing idle and load efficiency. Idle was easy I simply connected the test gear as listed above and turned on the system. For load testing I needed to make sure I covered all type of usage and did not concentrate on gaming only. For this I came up with 4 types of Load tests these are listed below.

Load -1 –This is really nothing more than a full 32MB run of Hyper Pi 0.99b. HyperPi uses the CPU, memory and hard drives causing a good amount of power usage. I will test for 3.3, 5, and 12 volt stability as well as seeing what the wattage use from the wall is. I will take a wattage measurement at each loop and then average this for the final wattage score. I will also take the Voltage reading at each loop and this will result in my average. Final numbers will be high, low and average for each reading.

Load -2 – For this test I will run a full render in LightWave 9.3 (x64) I will use Moonbase as the sample for rendering. I will take readings for Wattage, and voltage every 10 minutes and average these out. The same High, low and average will be recorded. Final numbers will be high, low and average for each reading.

Load-3 – Load test 3 will consist of a full defragmentation using O&O Defrag Professional Edition (Space) of the system drive. Again voltage readings will be done every 10 minutes.

Load -4 – Finally, the gaming tests. For this test I will run Crysis and then Assassins Creed for 1 hour each. Readings will be taken every 10 minutes and every level load. Final numbers will be high, low and average for each reading.

The system:
2 x Intel Xeon X5365 Processors (Quad Core 3.0GHz 1333MHz FSB)
Asus Z7S WS
4 GB (2x2GB) Kingston 667MHz FBDIMMs
3x Seagate Cheetah 15K.4 ST373454SS 74GB 15k RPM SAS HHDs (RAID 5)
3x 80GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST380815AS SATA II 3.0G HDDs (single drives)
LSI Logic LSI00118 PCI Express SAS MegaRAID 8344ELP 128MB
1 Sony DVD-RW
Asus Xonar D2
NZXT Sentry LX
Foxconn 9800GTX-512N
Microsoft Windows Vista x64 running on the RAID 5 Array.

Results:
After a few days of testing and retesting I was rather impressed. The UCP 1100 was able to handle my V8 system quite easily. Even under the heavy load from Lightwave 9.3 x64 and a full 40 frame render the power did not fluctuate. Although these days if a PSU did show signs of Voltage Droop, it would not be around for long. I was also pleased by the UCP 1100’s efficiency at the wall. I have run this V8 system with a few other PSUs and it was usually over the 525 Watt mark at the wall under load. Granted without specialized equipment I was not able to completely test the limits of this PSU but the results below should be sufficient to show the efficiency of the UCP 1100 even under the heavy requirements of the Dual quad core Xeon system. 

One of the nice things I noticed about the UCP 1100 is that the line voltage did not waver. There were no highs or lows. This PSU from CoolerMaster found a voltage and stayed there.
{mospagebreak title=Price/Warranty}
Price/ warranty:
The UCP 1100 is a top end PSU, as such it does have a top end price tag. Coming in at $349.99 (MSRP) it is going to take a big chunk out of your bank account.
But CoolerMaster is backing up this PSU with a very nice 5 year warranty on the UCP 1100.
This shows their confidence in the part and its performance as well.

Warranty information can be found on CoolerMaster’s site.

{mospagebreak title=Conclusion}
Conclusion:
I am not a big fan of PSU testing, without very specialized equipment for testing cross-loading, voltage ripple and, etc it is very hard to determine if a PSU really is going to live up to its claims. I feel that in the end I was able to devise a method for showing overall efficiency and performance. With this testing method the UCP 1100 showed itself to be a very nice unit, handling the power hungry Dual Xeon Quad Core system without breaking a sweat. The only down side to the UCP 1100 was the lack of modular cabling. This may put more than a few enthusiast off, yes the UCP performs amazingly but when faced with dealing with a mass of unused cables some may skip over the UCP for less efficient and powerful models. This is a shame as the UCP 1100 is one of the best PSUs I have ever hooked up to my V8. If you are looking for something to feed the power appetite of your own voracious system the CoolerMaster UCP 1100 should be at the top of your menu. 

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