UCP 700 W (also known as RS700-AAAAA3-US) from Cooler Master uses a DC-DC converter on its secondary, i.e. it is basically a +12 V power supply using two small power supplies to convert the main +12 V output into +5 V and +3.3 V. This is the same principle behind power supplies from Antec Signature, Seasonic M12D, Corsair HX (750W and up) series and at least with these other units it proved to deliver very high efficiency. UCP 700 W is 80 Plus Silver certified, meaning that it provides at least 85% efficiency at full load and at least 88% efficiency during typical (50% load) operation. By the way, UCP stands for Ultimate Circuit Protection.

The real manufacturer behind Cooler Master UCP series is Acbel.

As you can see on Figures 1 and 2 a great deal of attention was given to the external aspect of the power supply, which uses a special coating that makes it to look like a military-grade component.

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Figure 1: Cooler Master UCP 700 W power supply.

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Figure 2: Cooler Master UCP 700 W power supply.

UPC 700 W is a small unit, being 6” (15 cm) deep, using a 120-mm fan on its bottom and featuring active PFC, of course. It does not have a modular cabling system.

All cables are protected by a nylon sleeving and they all come from inside the power supply housing. Cables are somewhat long, measuring 19 11/16” (50 cm) between the housing and the first connector on the cable (the ATX12V/EPS12V cable is longer, measuring 23 5/8” or 60 cm), and 5 ½” (14 cm) between connectors on cables with more than one connector. All wires are 18 AWG, which is the correct gauge to be used.

The cables included are:

• Main motherboard cable with a 24-pin connector (no 20-pin option).
• One cable with one EPS12V connector and one ATX12V connector.
• Two auxiliary power cables for video cards with one six/eight-pin video card auxiliary power connector and one six-pin video card auxiliary power connector each.
• Two auxiliary power cables for video cards with one six-pin video card auxiliary power connector each.
• Two SATA power cables with three SATA power connectors each.
• One peripheral power cable with three standard peripheral power plugs.
• One peripheral power cable with two standard peripheral power plugs and one floppy disk drive power connector.

Even though this power supply brings six power connectors for video cards, there are some drawbacks on the configuration used. From these six connectors, four are six-pin and two are eight-pin, without the option to be converted into six-pin models. You won’t have any trouble setting up a two-way SLI or CrossFire configuration, but these connectors limit the kind of video cards you may have when installing a high-end three-way SLI or CrossFire configuration: you can only use this power supply with three high-end video cards only if the first two have one six-pin and one eight-pin connector and if the third one has two six-pin connectors. Since this probably won’t be the case, you will need to either convert the two eight-pin connectors into six-pin connectors or one of the six-pin connectors into an eight-pin one. In either case you will need to buy these adaptors, as UCP 700 W doesn’t come with them.

Also the eight-pin connectors are sharing the cables with six-pin connectors, which is not the best configuration. For the best performance each connector should use individual cables.

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Figure 3: Cables.

Let’s now take an in-depth look inside this power supply.