Rocketfish 550 W Power Supply Review

Introduction

The electronics store chain Best Buy has several house brands and two of them are used for computer components: Dynex and Rocketfish. We have already reviewed Dynex 400 W power supply and Rocketfish 700 W power supply. While the models we reviewed a while ago were manufactured by Huntkey, Best Buy decided to hire a different company for their 550 W model: CWT. They also replaced Huntkey as the manufacturer for their 700 W model, so the 700 W model you find now on stores today (labeled “RF-700WPS2”) is manufactured by CWT, not by Huntkey anymore. Let’s see if this new 550 W power supply survives our tests.

Rocketfish 550 W (also known as RF-550WPS) is not a 550 W power supply, but a 500 W model with 550 W peak wattage. At least they put this very clear on the product box, even though we are completely against this practice. We think all power supplies should be labeled with their continuous maximum wattage at a high temperature (of at least 40° C). The reasons are clear if you follow our reviews (if you don’t click here to understand more).

Figure 1: Rocketfish 550 W power supply.

Figure 2: Rocketfish 550 W power supply.

Rocketfish 550 W is 6 19/64” (160 mm) deep, using a 140 mm fan that glows blue when turned on on its bottom and featuring active PFC.

The reviewed power supply has a modular cabling system with three cables coming from inside the unit and thus permanently attached to the power supply: the main motherboard cable (with a 20/24-pin connector), one cable with two ATX12V connectors that together form an EPS12V connector and one cable with one six-pin auxiliary power connector for video cards. These cables are protected by a nylon sleeving that comes from inside the power supply.

The modular cabling system has four connectors and the power supply comes with five cables:

• One auxiliary power cables for video cards with one six-pin video card auxiliary power connector (installed on the red connector from the system).
• Two SATA power cables with three SATA power connectors each.
• One peripheral power cable with three standard peripheral power plugs and one floppy disk drive power connector.
• One peripheral power cable with four standard peripheral power plugs.

The number of cables is enough for you to build a mainstream PC, but you will have trouble if you’d like to install a very high-end video card that features an eight-pin power connector, as this power supply only has six-pin connectors.

All wires are 18 AWG, which is the correct gauge to be used. All cables measure 17” (43 cm) between the power supply and the first connector on the cable, and then 5 ½” (140 mm) between each connector on the cable on cables that have more than one connector.

Figure 3: Cables.

Now let’s take an in-depth look inside this power supply.