Ultra is a traditional power supply manufacturer and the first to come with the modular cabling system idea (which led the company to sue all manufacturers that launched power supplies with a modular cabling system, including Antec, Thermaltake, FSP, CWT, Seasonic and Corsair, just to name a few). Today they are launching a new series called X4 featuring a complete modular cabling system and single-rail design. Let’s see if the 850 W model from this new series is a good buy.

Power supplies from X4 series are manufactured by Andyson. The only other power supply from Andyson that we ever tested was BFG ES-800 (note that BFG uses other manufacturers besides Andyson).

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Figure 1: Ultra X4 850 W power supply.

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Figure 2: Ultra X4 850 W power supply.

Ultra X4 850 W is a small 850 W unit, being 6 19/64” (16 cm) deep, using a 135-mm fan on its bottom and featuring active PFC, of course.

As mentioned, Ultra X4 has a fully modular cabling system, meaning that even the main motherboard cable is removable. The cables included are:

• Main motherboard cable with a 24-pin connector (no 20-pin support) (23” or 59 cm).
• One EPS12V cable (23” or 59 cm).
• One ATX12V cable (23” or 59 cm).
• Three cables with one six/eight-pin video card auxiliary power connector each (25” or 64 cm).
• Three cables with one six-pin video card auxiliary power connector each (25” or 64 cm).
• Three SATA power cables with three SATA power connectors each (17 ½” or 44 cm between the power supply and the first connector, 6” or 15 cm between connectors).
• One SATA power cable with two SATA power connectors (17 ½” or 44 cm between the power supply and the first connector, 6” or 15 cm between connectors).
• One peripheral power cable with three standard peripheral power plugs each (17 ½” or 44 cm between the power supply and the first connector, 6” or 15 cm between connectors).
• Two peripheral power cables with two standard peripheral power plugs and one floppy disk drive power connector each (17 ½” or 44 cm between the power supply and the first connector, 6” or 15 cm between connectors).
• One peripheral power cable with two standard peripheral power plugs (17 ½” or 44 cm between the power supply and the first connector, 6” or 15 cm between connectors).
• One adaptor to convert any peripheral power plug into two floppy disk drive power connectors.

All wires are 18 AWG, which is the correct gauge to be used, except the wires on the main motherboard cable, which are thicker (16 AWG).

As you can see Ultra X4 850 W comes with six individual power connectors for video cards, and they can be all used together. This means Ultra X4 850 W supports SLI/CrossFire configurations with three video cards that required two auxiliary power connectors each. This is a perfect configuration for an 850 W product.

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Figure 3: Cables.

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