And, in all of these cases, you just can't scrape up the $175-$200 that it will take to buy a trustworthy 750-850 watt PSU. Well, if you can come up with about one-third of that, and have a spare 5 ¼” drive slot, the Ultra Power Partner may be the answer to your problems.
Shawn and I discussed this exact thing probably a year and a half ago. I had built a new rig and my PSU wasn't quite powerful enough to make the trip. Everything worked ok until I installed a new GPU cooler. That extra fan put my PSU just over the brink, and caused me not to have enough power for the video card. I knew I was going to review a larger PSU in the near future and just didn't want to buy another at the time. If I would have had a small spare PSU, I would have modded it some way to power just a couple of components, maybe the fans and optical drives, to take some of the work away from the primary one. Ultra must have been reading my mind.
The Ultra Power Partner is a 325 watt auxiliary power supply that fits into an optical drive bay. It works in addition to your current PSU, for example, if you have a 500 watt power supply, install the Power Partner, and now you have 825 watts, plenty extra juice to power that pair of 8800GT cards. Is the Power Partner the answer to your power problems? Read on.
Ultra is an Ohio-based company that has a large array of computer hardware products, but their claim to fame is their power supplies and cases. I first heard of them probably five years ago when enthusiasts started praising their PSUs, most of which have a lifetime warranty.
The Power Partner is packaged in this attractive box. Pretty much all the information you'd want is printed on the outside. It is well protected by foam and should withstand being dropped from a few feet.
Specifications:
Max Output Current: +5v…5A +12v…26A
Total Output Power:
325W (Full Load, Nominal Input Voltage)
Efficiency:
73% Typical at Full Load and Nominal Input Voltage
Input
AC Input Voltage: Automatic Full Range (115-230 VAC)
AC Input Frequency: 50-60Hz
AC Input Currents:
· 6A (RMS) at 115VAC input
· 4A (RMS) at 230VAC input
Connectors:
1 - 24-Pin Motherboard Connector
2 - 4-Pin Molex Connectors
2 - 6-Pin PCI Express Connectors
1 - 8-Pin PCI Express Connector
Additional Features:
· Supports AMD and Intel Motherboards
· Low Acoustic Noise
· Meets ATX Version 2.03, and ATX 12V Version 1.2 Specifications
· Short Circuit Protection
· In-Rush Current Protection
· Thermal Overload Cutoff Protection
· MTBF > 100,000 Hours at Full Load, 110VAC and 25°C Ambient Condition
· FCC and UL Recognized
