The Internals

Taking a look inside Corsair's VX550, we can see that the OEM for this model is Channel Well Technology (CWT). Most of the CWT-made power supplies I've seen sport a green transformer, and filters that are covered in heatshrink, and the VX550 is no surprise at this. The internals look fairly standard, with all the components you'd expect to see in a power supply all there. The heatsinks are punched black aluminum. Taking a quick look and doing a quick "poke" test (physically poking them with a pencil), all the components are firmly in place, so it seems that the solder and screws are doing a fine job. Build quality is good.

The primary uses a 330uF Hitachi (Japan) capacitor rated with an operating temperature of 105 degrees celcius.

The secondary uses smaller United Chemicon capacitors (Japan), also rated with an operating temperature of 105 degrees celcius.

The fan is supplied by ADDA and is rated for an airflow of 85CFM with noise at 39dBa. This fan will never likely achieve this maximum airflow with regular usage, as its rotational speed is controlled based on the load and/or temperature of the power supply.

So far from the preliminary look at the inside of Corsair's VX550 power supply, I'm looking at a well constructed power supply that is using a good choice of components.