Build Quality
As we already know the Solid Gear Neutron 550W features a single 120mm fan design like many other offerings on the market that has come to be the preferred standard for quiet cooling environments due to the ability to move a larger volume of air at slower speeds than a smaller diameter fan. While great for quiet computing environments the key criteria in our evaluation is whether or not the cooling solution is sufficient, not necessarily its sound level or form factor.
External Build Quality
The exterior of the Solid Gear Neutron 550W looks very generic. There is nothing about the exterior of this unit that stands out in any good way. It just looks like the most generic entry in the generic power supply page of Wikipedia. Perhaps the most interesting part is all of the literature about this unit indicates that it is a non-PFC power supply. However, it does not have the 115v/230v switch present. That, I guess, is somewhat telling about the general quality here. The most interesting thing we see is something that is missing and does not jive with the advertising.
The Solid Gear Neutron 550W comes in at a total length of ~6 1/2 inches while the cables come in at a length of ~14″ to 18″ to the first or only connector. Which, by the way, are hardly the “Ultralong Cable” that we were advertised as getting. Additionally, the cables are sort of sleeved in standard sleeving….but also sort of not.
Internal Build Quality
Once we open the top of the Solid Gear Neutron 550W, we want to just close it back up again and hope we never see such a horror again. The most noticeable thing, to most people, will be how sparse this unit looks and you are correct; it is a sparse looking unit. However, it is not a sparse looking unit in that elegant well-designed sense. No, it is sparse in the “where in the hell did the rest of the power supply go” sense.
The topology is positively ancient double forward primary and group regulated secondary (and undersized for a 550W unit in every conceivable way at that). The fan cooling this unit today is a bit unusual as it is supposedly a rifle bearing Martech fan rated at 0.37A at 12v. We have only seen one other Martech fan here at TheFPSReview and that was with the Bitfenix Formula Gold 550W. Lastly, we see neat soldering on the rear of the primary side PCB and then a whole lot of not great soldering on the secondary side PCB. Also, why do we have two PCB’s here?
The Neutron 550W incomplete input filtering begins up on the housing itself with some X capacitors and Y capacitors and the balance of the filtering is on the main PCB and is incomplete. The bridge rectifier is next and it is not attached to a heatsink which seems like a bad plan. On the one small heatsink, we find the APFC power components. This is followed by the APFC coil. The main input capacitor is by Samxon and it is rated a laughably small 450v 150uF 85C. This would be undersized in a 250W power supply let alone a “550W” power supply.
The “secondary side” of this unit looks very sparse with just three small heatsinks for the main switching transistors (one heatsink) and secondary power components (two heatsinks). Between the switchers and the true secondary side, we see the transformers. Throughout the laughably under-built secondary, we find a number of LTEC standard capacitors. Lastly, we see the screening on the main PCB showing that supposedly Delta built this power supply (maybe they did, in 1998).
Build Quality Summary
Today’s Solid Gear Neutron 550W is the first power supply we have seen from Solid Gear and it is a disaster. For an entry-level product from 1998, the Neutron 550W seems like a marginal 200-250W unit. Today? It only tips the scales at “really? I mean really?”.
The exterior build quality is absolutely bland, generic, no one gave a care in the world. Which, you know is fine if the guts are good. The guts, however, are about as good as an 8-day old decaying trout. The interior of the unit is sparse in a way that is simply comically bad. It features an ancient, and poorly implemented, topology with dodgy components and not great actual build quality.
While Delta is normally thought of as a high-end OEM they have produced all kinds of things over the years and one hopes that either this is not actually a Delta power supply or someone found some NOS from 1998 and stuffed it in this housing today. Let’s move on now to the load tests and see how the Neutron 550W explodes! I mean shines…….