Rosewill CAPSTONE Series CAPSTONE-550 Continuous 550W & 50 degree C Power Supply

Pros: Everything I stated back in May of 2013 still holds true and I hold even more praise for this line & brand of PSU's than before. PSU is still completely silent. Powerful enough for an i7 and R9 290; more info below. Lengthened warranty from 5 to 7 years! AnandTech Editor's Choice Award Winner. Competitive pricing for an outstanding product

Cons: Definitely Not

Overall Review: This PSU is still powering my HTPC which has had an overhaul since I first reviewed it. My HTPC main components are now: Gigabyte Z97-N WiFi Mini-ITX board i7 4770k @ 4.3GHz 8GB Corsair Vengeance Pro 2133MHz 1.5V PowerColor R9 290 @ 1075/1375 This little PSU just keeps on chugging and has never let me down. It holds stable for lengthy gaming sessions where the R9 290 is utilized 100% for nearly the entire game session. My overclock on this 290 isn't extreme, but it is common knowledge that efficiency isn't one of the strong points of the 290(X) cards. I've had no problem powering the 290 for the last 9 months. Has no problem feeding the overclocked, 4.3GHz, 4770k @ 85-100% load for Bluray rips that typically take 30-50 minutes; depending on the title. I will be dropping a 4790k into my HTPC soon. The 4790k seems promising as it is clocking 4.7GHz in my test bench and the chip hasn't even been delidded yet. Hoping to shave a few minutes off my BD rip times with the higher clock speeds. Just buy one!

Pros: I usually wait 4 - 5 months for reviewing a PS. This PS works as advertised. It slashed 40w off my previous 650W 80 PLUS PS (as measured with P3 Kill a watt).

Cons: None

Pros: My desktop runs around the clock, so the 80-Plus Gold was almost vital in my quest to shave a few buck from my electric bill. The system, while high-powered, lives in a HP Pavilion Media Center PC case as I am married to the front ports for my Hauppauge capture card. This is actually NOT a well thought-out case and it is hard to cram equipment in there or route cables, so modular cabling was also a necessity, along with this PSU's relatively small depth. I'm not a gamer and perfectly content with my GT640 video card, which gets all the power it needs from the PCIe bus, and I have an external server with a RAID array for data storage so I'm only powering an SSD and no hard drives. My largest power requirement is an FX-8150 CPU and this PSU has no problem with that. The fan on my old PSU had begun to sound like a thrashing HDD and was totally unnerving. The silence of my desktop with this PSU is beautiful.

Cons: The "relatively small depth" I alluded to above was not as small as one would expect from only a 450W power supply. It took some finesse to get it massaged into the aforementioned HP Media Center case behind the shortest DVD-ROM I could find.

Overall Review: You can never have too much power for your system, but it is entirely possible to have too little. 450W is incredibly small by today's standards, but if your system has no hard drives or discrete video cards (or if your video adapter is entirely bus-powered like mine) this one gets the job done nicely with an excellent and money-saving efficiency rating to boot.

Pros: This is a very well-built power supply. The casing is solid, the connectors clicked in solidly, the 24-pin fit without too much pressure, and the options for connectors was smart. The voltages were very stable under heavy load and I was able to overclock my FSB much higher due to the stable voltages. Unfortunately, all this is completely irrelevant (see cons)

Cons: It failed on day two! My kill-a-watt meter reported that I was only drawing about 250-280W at the wall so there is no excuse for this to have completed failed in that time. I tried testing it with a paperclip on the green to ground and the fan wouldn't spin. It just clicks unhappily. I tried it with a new power cord, on a different circuit, and in a different building. Nope, it's dead. In 7 years and building about 400 computers I've had a power supply fail this quickly once and it certainly wasn't a gold certified, award winning one. Avoid this power supply at all costs. There is either a severe design defect or they're lying about the build quality and specs.

Overall Review: The shipping box wasn't damaged, it didn't get wet, I didn't have a power surge or outage, and I barely got about 15 hours on the power supply before it failed. There is simply no excuse for that early of a failure.

Pros: 80 Plus Gold: Goodbye, 77%-efficient legacy PSU, hello, 90%-efficiency modern PSU! I'm all for cutting wasted power down in any new build, as less wasted power = less wasted heat. Modular: Thanks to its modularity - in addition to my maTX case only having 2 molex fans - I'm only using two PSU cables out of four. Price: I can't directly reference the price due to Newegg's Product Review Guidelines(tm) but given its...consistency from introduction through today, as long as you can live with the relatively modest wattage, you're not getting a more efficient modular PSU at this price point.

Cons: I have no real angst over this purchase, but I will point out the 20+4pin and 4+4pin cables are embedded into the PSU, hence this is not a "full-modular" PSU. Also, the manual lists a "Capstone-550-M" model but that's currently not in the Newegg catalog. Hmm....

Overall Review: As semi-proof of ownership, here is the cable setup on the 450W: * SATA--SATA--SATA--SATA * Molex--Molex--Molex--Floppy * SATA--SATA--Molex--Molex * PCIe 6+2--PCIe 6+2 Based on page 3 of the manual I'd guess the mythical 550W has the same connection scheme, but just a higher wattage threshold. Also, I haven't noticed any significant PSU fan noise. It's ran the following without hiccups: CPU: i5-3570k @ stock speed/voltage GPU: HD 6870 1GB @ stock speed/voltage RAM: 8GB DDR3-1600 SSD: Samsung 830 256GB Fans: 3x case + 1x aftermarket CPU cooler

Pros: Quiet, can't hear it at all. Very efficient, saw about 35W drop under full load compared to old PSU, about 20 or so at idle. My machine is on 24/7 usually running BOINC when not used as workstation, so efficiency was most welcome. Priced just right, Gold certification on a budget. Efficiency is best at around 40-60% draw (180-270W), so plan your system build accordingly. Although its going to be plenty efficient at most any draw, one key to building an efficient system is calculating your typical power usage and picking a PSU that is maybe 40-50% more total wattage than you need under full or nearly full load. any more than that, and your typical power usage ends up being in a less efficient 'zone' as 80 Plus only requires higher efficiency above 20% draw and most light to moderate computing would only be at the lowest point of 'higher' efficiency or even below, which is still great and all, but might as well get the most out of you Gold certified PSU.

Cons: not modular i guess

Overall Review: Phenom II x4 920 Asrock k10m78n Asus GT440 2x WD 640 Black raid0 1x DVD 4GB DDR2 (2x2GB) CM Hyper 520N CPU cooler

Pros: * PRICE * Superflower Internals * Gold Certified * 5 Year Warranty * 4 PCI-E 6+2 connectors * Entire CAPSTONE Series is JonnyGURU Approved * Actually capable of about 700 watt output Do a quick search here on the Egg: PowerSupplies>600-700 watt>4 PCI-E connectors. That criteria alone puts the prices at about $100+ for a quality unit. Now add Gold Certification onto those Search criteria and look at the prices. Yeah, This Rosewill CAPSTONE 650w (even at full price after the 10% off promotion) wins BIG. Superflower has been big in Asia for a couple of years now and everyone was wondering when they'd come to the US market. Rosewill pulled off a minor tech coup by grabbing the Superflower Green Series internals for this CAPSTONE series. Big move. Gutsy move. This means Rosewill can now provide HIGH quality power supply units (that beat similarly watted/priced SeaSonic units) to us, the customer, at great prices.

Cons: I have only owned this unit for a couple of days. The only thing I found wrong with my unit physically, out of the box, was that 2 of the screw holes where the unit fastens to the back/bottom of my case were tapped out cr@ppy--couldn't even get the screws started into them. But with two diagonally placed thumb screws the psu is firmly in place and isn't going anywhere. This is a minor issue and not even worth taking an egg off for. Next issue, documentation is very very VERY weak. But Rosewill makes up for it by CLEARLY and BOLDLY marking each and every connector. Even a novice builder can shine with this psu. One thing that kinda peeves me (as lame as this may sound to some of you guys) is the fact that Rosewill included no case badge or stickers of any sort in my box. Yeah, I know "Come on Crash, that's for noobs..." Fact is, Rosewill is really coming on STRONG with their Lightning, HIVE and now, CAPSTONE series psu's. Show us your pride Rosewill!

Overall Review: Before I close, here's my rig: cpu: Intel Q6600 @ 3.81GHz 1.532v BIOS cooler: Megahalems + 2 Yate Loon D12SH-12 push/pull mobo: Gigabyte EP45-UD3R RAM: 4 GB Kingston HyperX @ 1117 MHz 5/5/5/15 2.3vBIOS HDDs: 2 WD Caviar Blacks--not in RAID,1 is storage only gpu: Gigabyte GTX 460 1 GB <--- BIG overclock front intake: 2 120mm Antec Tri-Cool (Blue) on HIGH 1 80mm Antec Tri-Cool (Blue) on HIGH rear exhaust: 1 Scythe S-Flex "F" 120mm on HIGH top exhaust: 1 Antec Tri-Cool 140mm on HIGH My older little rig does nothing to stress this cpu. But I bought this CAPSTONE to carry it over to my next build where I'll SLI 2 GTX 460's with a 2500k. And even that shouldn't make this CAPSTONE 650 watt break a sweat. If anything should happen I'll be back with an update review here. This is the Egg's house brand so I'm really hoping they'll step up (if something should go wrong with this psu) and not make me regret not buying another Cor$@ir psu.

Pros: Descent single 12V rail, quiet, stable voltages, it is NOT modular, great sale price, gold certified.

Cons: Did NOT install itself. It was bigger then the supply that came out, but fit in my new case perfectly!

Overall Review: I recently started upgrading my old machine and it was getting to the point the old power supply(6ooW Antec) sounded like a F-16 winding up and it was blowing super heated air out. Now my machine is once again nice and quiet and this supply is blowing out cool air. Don't much care for modular supplies, less loss in a nice soldered wire connection. Really don't care much for multi-rail 12V supplies either. So this supply came along at the right time. It was bigger then my old Antec supply and took up more space in my case, but there is only so many watts you can pack into a small space. Electronics Engineer, started working on PC's when the clock rate was a whopping 4.77Mhz and the latest version of DOS is all you had to brag about! System config: Intel Gigabit NIC Dual RS-232 card Rosewill CHALLENGER Black Gaming ATX Mid Tower Case G.SKILL Sniper Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) LITE-ON 24X DVD (2EA) GIGABYTE GA-970A-UD3 AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition MSI N260GTX-T2D896 OC