Solid Gear Neutron 550W Power Supply Review

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Overview

The Solid Gear Neutron 550W packaging looks a bit generic. 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 “Hydraulic Bearing Fan”, “High Efficiency”, “12v Single Rail”, and “Ultralong Cable”. Those are not really things to brag about and the “High Efficiency” isn’t that high as they have not even tried to claim an 80 Plus rating. Indeed, on the Solid Gear website, we see that they list the efficiency as “78% efficiency”. Ouch!

Perhaps an even bigger burn is the fact that we can’t find a warranty listed anywhere with what we bought. However, some digging through the Solid Gear website did turn up the following:

Product Warranty Period:
All SolidGear retail products are covered with 1 year manufacture replace/repair warranty from the date of purchase.

Oh, joy! Moving on, the back of the package has our advertising points from the front but now includes pictures to boot! On the sides of the packaging, we find the power label (reproduced below) and connector counts (reproduced below) for all members of the Neutron family.

The Solid Gear Neutron 550W is advertised as being a single 12v rail power supply with a 12v capacity up to an estimated 33A (or ~72% of the unit’s capacity) if necessary. The minor rails (5v and 3.3v) have a capacity of 25A each and the combined capacity of those two rails is 150W. Combined with these outputs, we find that this unit has 1 PCIe connector, 4 SATA connectors, and 3 Molex connectors. All in all, that is a very low 12v capacity for a modern unit and hardly any connectors. That, plus the fact that this unit is listed as 115v/230v makes me think something is rotten in the state of Denmark (especially when we actually look at the unit later).

Once we open the Solid Gear Neutron 550W packaging we find the power supply and the power cord. That is it. Nothing else. So, recycle your mounting screws! This just gets better and better. And by better and better I mean worse and worse. 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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