Ultra Products, Inc. is trying its hand at that most glorious of corporate traditions: suing the pants off one's competition. The maker of computer components is taking 22 -- yes, twenty two! -- of their competitors to court, claiming to have a patent for modular power supplies since November of 2006. Ultra says they sent several warnings to the companies about the violations and is asking for the legal maximum of three times the damages. The suit actually doesn't accuse the companies of violating the patent, but of being an accomplice to end users who are violating the patent. Oh, and unless we're missing something here, Hewlett Packard filed a modular power supply patent in 2000 -- we certainly recall Screen Savers covering the devices way back in '99.

[Thanks, Mack]

We don't want you to get your hopes all sky high for nothin', so we'll preface this by noting that Gigabyte's Visuals only operates with the firm's Odin GT-series of power supplies. For those still with us, this monitor-mountable gizmo enables users to keep a close eye on the temperature, power and fan speed of their PSU, and it gets all the juice / information it needs via USB. Granted, it's probably overkill for all but the most hardcore of overclockers, but no one here ever said that extravagance was necessarily a bad thing. Look for this one to land anytime for a currently undisclosed price, and hey, maybe next year Gigabyte will open up the compatibility list a bit, eh?

[Via OhGizmo]

Mark this down as a little out there, but a new Marvell chip claims to improve the efficiency of desktop and laptop power supplies by determining and then optimizing the amount of energy each particular application needs. Named a "power factor correction controller," the chip enables computers to comply with new Energy Star guidelines that require computers to use at least 80 percent of the energy supplied to power them. It's not the only chip out there that claims to improve efficiency using this method, although Marvell has already started producing the chips with the aim of hitting full volume production in Q1 2008, and seeing them in PCs thereafter.

The US Defense Department is looking to lighten the load soldiers have to lug around in order to keep all their gear powered, and its hoping the general public can help them do it. To that end, the DoD's gone and busted out a DARPA-style competition, with a million dollars in prize money in store for the winner. They'll have their work cut out for them though, as the competition demands that the power supply be half the weight of current systems while still providing the same amount of power (or more). That translates to a system that weighs no more than 4 kilograms (8.8 pounds) and provides enough power for 96 hours of operation, with a peak power requirement of 200W for short periods. Even if you don't come out on top, you'll still have a shot at the $500,000 and $250,000 prizes for second and third place, although you'll have to get your act together pretty quickly: the cut-off date for registration is in November of this year, with the whole thing set to wrap up a year after that.

[Via The Inquirer]

These days, it's not difficult to find a cutting-edge hardware component with a liquid-cooled option, but streaming water through a power supply is a new one on us. Aside from the potential fire hazard implications, we're a bit stumped as to why a vanilla 450-watt power supply would actually need such superfluous cooling measures in place, but we can assume that this bad boy is whisper quiet until it springs a leak. Nevertheless, JSP Tech's interesting new PSU was spotted at Computex with a CPU cooling extension tackily attached to it, but we've no idea if or when this admittedly questionable device will ever hit the market.

Product reviews are typically a welcome nugget of knowledge when trying to make a critical purchasing decision, but we'd probably succumb to just picking a power supply at random before actually wading through 105 reviews to find out which one was king. While this could all very well be a completely impractical prank, Stéphane Charpentier of MatBe has apparently put just over one hundred PSUs on the testing bench in order to find out which is worth your cash, and he went through a variety of flavors and wattages to make sure the very one you were eying was thoughtfully included. Without getting into specifics, Akasa's Power80+ took home the gold in the nonmodular category, Antec's Neo HE notched first place in the modular realm, the Fortron Zen won in the fanless arena, Cooler Master's Real Power Pro ruled the "powerful" division, and Antec's Earthwatts proved the most "valuable." Of course, there's a good bit of detail surrounding the 100 other losers in the crowd, so if you're down with skimming through 140 pages of PSU reviews, the read link awaits your attention.

[Via Inquirer]

Not everyone is equipped with the skills (and time) necessary to craft their own flashlight-based cellphone charger, so Sony's looking out for those who'd rather throw down a few bills than handle a soldering iron. Looking to grab business from individuals packing a gazillion or so gadgets that receive energy via USB, the Energy LINK USB adapter provides a no frills alternative to charging and powering your device on-the-go. Aside from doubling as a recharging middleman, it comes with two rechargeable Cycle Energy batteries -- which purportedly "bridge the gap" between alkaline and NiMH cells -- to provide portable charging and power. The included batteries can be fully recharged in around three hours, but there's no word on just how much charging / powering abilities it possesses once powered up. Still, for those needing a simple charging option or a makeshift USB power supply in times of emergency, Sony's $35 Energy LINK should do the trick when it lands this summer.

There's just nothing quite like the smell of four graphics cards burning through energy in the morning to get you amped for the day, and Thermaltake is making sure you've got the juice and the connectors to make it happen. While not quite as mighty as Ultra Products' 2,000-watt behemoth, the 1,200- and 1,000-watt Toughpower PSUs support both AMD and Intel rigs and boast a trio of six-pin PCI-E connectors, eight SATA and Molex ports, and both units claim the "world's first" tag by collectively being numero uno to include eight-pin PCI-E connectors. The backwards compatible ports allow gamers to hit up a bit of Quad SLI action on their own, and considering the massive power draw demanded by such cards, it's good to know you've got so much energy on tap for those graphically straining firefights. Although there's no pricing information available just yet, the W0133 / W0132 should be available soon, and if you're already considering throwing down for four high-end GPUs, we highly doubt cashflow is of primary concern.

[Via FarEastGizmos]
Read - Thermaltake Toughpower W0133
Read - Thermaltake Toughpower W0132

We're all about watching new "world's (insert adjective here)" gizmos become a reality, and we certainly don't mind the occasional dash of overkill, but Ultra Products' forthcoming power supply takes "insane" to another level. In what's presumably the world's largest, most powerful PSU to call an ATX case home, the 2000-watt Modular X3 comes in at 10.25-inches in length and will reportedly fit "wherever a PC Power & Cooling 1000-watt version will". The +12V rail alone is rated at 1800-watts, which means that it can purportedly handle a 150A load, and just might cause some sort of small disaster if actually achieved. Nevertheless, the smorgasbord of connectors allow for more power connections that most could even fathom needing, but Ultra believes that this PSU should remove all worry over whether or not your rig "has enough juice." While it's easy to brush this off as completely absurd, the latest AMD scorchers combined with a few NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX or ATI R600 cards could easily eat up a good bit of the supplied power, so if a ginormous power supply was the only thing missing from finishing up your energy-sucking rig, Ultra's X3 should be available sometime this quarter for "less than $499."

[Via Digg]

You know, ever since Sony got all responsible on us and started recalling those exploding batteries of theirs, things have been pretty quiet on the whole "OMG my computer is on fire" front. That's why we're happy to report that NEC is recalling fire-starting power supplies in 14,600 of its Valuestar desktops, which were produced between November 2003 and June 2004. Two computers have already esploded due to overheating PSUs, but luckily nobody has been hurt yet. It's a Japan-only problem, and we're not quiet sure how to go about getting your power supply replaced or how much the total cost of the recall will be for NEC, but we're really just glad to be back in the swing of things.