BitFenix Formula Gold 550W Power Supply Review

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Overview

The BitFenix Formula Gold 550W packaging looks a bit like most brands packaging these days. The front of the package starts the companies branding and features an image of the power supply itself. In addition to that, we see a smattering of seals including one for a 5-year warranty, and an 80 Plus Gold seal. A quick check of the 80 Plus website does, indeed, find this unit listed. The back of the package changes things up a bit as it has the power label (reproduced below), connector counts (reproduced below), fan profile, and unit dimensions included. On the side of the packaging, we find a slew of advertising points centered around how efficient the unit is, what protections the unit has, and the fact that it is a multi-12v rail power supply.

The Formula Gold 550W is advertised as being a multi-12v rail power supply with a 12v capacity up to an estimated 45.83A (or ~100% of the unit’s capacity) if necessary. The minor rails (5v and 3.3v) have a capacity of 20A each and the combined capacity of those two rails is 100W. Combined with these outputs, we find that this unit has 2 PCIe connectors, 6 SATA connectors, and 2 Molex connectors. These connectors are divided across the 12v rails such that the motherboard and peripherals are powered off of one 12v rail, the CPU is powered off of one 12v rail, and the PCIe connectors are powered off of one 12v rail (which has a capacity of 30A instead of 25A like the other two rails).

Once we open the BitFenix Formula Gold 550W packaging we find the power supply, mounting screws, the power cord, the user manual, and some zip-ties. The user manual covers this model as well as the 450W, 650W, and 750W models and it is 41 pages long in 4 languages. That length, however, does not mean that it is terribly informative as we find just the power tables, connector counts, etc that were on the package. The manual is not exactly great. Let’s move on to the unit itself now.

Paul Johnson
Paul is a long time PC hobbyist and tech enthusiast having gotten his start when he broke his first C64 quickly followed by breaking his first IBM XT. Most notably however, for 12 years, he served as the Power Supply Editor for one of the truly early, groundbreaking, and INDPENDENT PC enthusiast sites ([H]ardOCP) until its mothballing in April of 2019. Paul now brings the same flair and style of his power supply reviews to The FPS Review.

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