Spire Power Rocketeer V Power Supply
www.SpirePower.com
Price: $99.99

There are many different items in your PC that work together to bring your PC to life and create the core of your PC. One of the more important parts of your PC is its heart and muscle, the Power Supply. Without a solid power source, your whole PC can suffer and have issues and without a safe power supply, your whole PC can be harmed.

Spire Power, a division of Spire (who is also Spire Coolers), has recently come out with their gaming series of power supply, the Rocketeer. While intended for gaming, they also can be used in other applications that require high output, stable power supplies. These power supplies are also modular which means the cords are removable so you only put in the ones you need. This makes for a much cleaner build in most situations.

For our review, I received the SP-500w Rocketeer V. This is the smaller of the two models available, the other model is the Rocketeer VI which is very similar, but a 600w version with dual PCIe Power Adapters (for two PCIe Video Cards).

First Impressions/Unpacking:

• Modular Cables
• Colored Velcro Straps
• Black Zip Ties
• Power Cord

All the modular cables are pre-wrapped in a mesh/plastic material that looks very good. It is smooth on the outside and has a mesh interior that you can see since the outside is clear. The main mainboard power cables are also wrapped, but they are NOT modular, the mainboard power cables are attached permanently to the power supply. For connectors, you have quite a good mix. The following modular cables are included (each bullet is a modular cable):

• Dual Sata
• Standard 4pin with Floppy 4pin
• Standard 4pin with Floppy 4pin
• Dual Standard 4pin
• Dual Standard 4pin
• Single PCI Express (PCIe)

Under the box that contains the accessories, you will find the power supply unit itself. The unit is in a bubble wrap bag for protection and the bottom of the box also has a foam pad so that the power supply is even more protected from drops and falls (while in the box). Permanently connected to the power supply are:

• Main 20pin Mainboard Cable
• +4 Cable to make Main 20pin Mainboard Cable a 24pin cable
• P4 4pin Cable
• +4 Cable to make P4 4pin Cable a 8pin Cable

With the permanent cables I must say that I wish the +4pin cables were removable. For example, with my setup I did not need either one (as I have a standard P4, 20pin mainboard), so the two +4pin cables I had to find a spot for to hide (luckily with my case I was able to wrap them around outside of the case window).

Looking at the Power Supply itself, it has an amazing finish to it. It is a dark silvery color which is like a mirror. Pictures never seem to do it justice, but here is my try at it (in person, the cell phone is mirrored perfectly on the power supply):

Here you will notice the 120mm fan on the bottom of the unit:

This is where the modular cables hook into:

This is the back of the unit that will be facing outside your computer. Notice the square green button to turn on and off the 120mm fan. The small blue LED next to the power switch goes on when the green button is pressed (so you know the 120mm is on if you do not have a case window). You can also see the 80mm fan that also has blue LEDs and is always on:

After unpacking everything, it was time to install the Rocketeer V in our system. The specifications for our system can be found HERE, but here is quick run down of the specs:

• 3.4GHZ Intel P4
• NVIDIA BFG 6800OC
• 2gb DDR400 Memory
• 160gb SATA + 80GB IDE HDDs
• Dual 15" Monitors
• Liquid Cooled

Currently our system is being powered the the Cooler Master 450w Power Supply which has been very reliable and worked well. The Cooler Master is setup with a single 120mm fan with Blue LEDs for cooling and a honey comb exterior on the back to allow for maximum airflow. For noise, the 120mm fan is automatically controlled by the power supply depending on the temperature.

The Rocketeer has a little different setup for cooling. On the back is a 80mm fan with Blue LEDs that is always running. On the bottom there is 120mm fan with Blue LEDs that only runs when you press the button on the back of the power supply. When the button is pressed, the 120mm fan runs at full speed and there is no speed control for the fan. This tended to make the power supply a bit louder, but you could leave the 120mm fan off most of the time without having any heat problems.

Installation:

To start the install process, our system was unplugged and put up on our work bench. The first step was to remove the old Cooler Master power supply which went smoothly. Next, the Spire Power Rocketeer V was mounted and the mainboard power cables connected. Then the modular cables could be connected to the power supply and the devices in the system. Finally, a bit a tidying up and use of the Velcro straps helped to make for a clean finished look.

Here you can see how I routed the modular cables together down behind the drive cages (on the right) to get a cleaner look:

There is not a ton of flexibility in the cables, but there is some on the smaller cables especially:

Close up of the 120mm fan turned on (the 120mm fan has blue LEDs along with the 80mm fan that has blue LEDs, so with the 120mm turned on you get a good glow from the power supply):

This is an overview shot of the cabling completed. Notice the extra +4 wires that I did not need are put along the edge of the case running along the top and then down the front:

Here is with the case side panel back on and the Dual Cold Cathode lights turned on (notice how nice the mesh looks with the additional light on!):

I felt that when I was done, you definitely see more of the wiring than you did with the Cooler Master. But this is because the wiring on the Rocketeer is not as flexible and so is out in the open. The good thing is that the wiring looks good unlike the normal standard wiring!

Overall the installation went fairly smoothly. The main problem is the stiffness of the cables due to the wrapping that is on them. Since the wrapper is plastic and mesh, it does not like to bend very much, especially on the thicker cables (like the main mainboard cable). In looking at other reviews on the Rocketeer, this is the main Con that comes up and is really something that needs to be improved on. Even though the mesh looks really neat, it can be a real pain to get the cables to fit well in the case.

Performance:

Now comes the time to take a look at the actual performance of the Rocketeer. This is always a hard thing to judge with power supplies as it can fluctuate a lot depending on what you are running, what you are using to measure, etc. and then when you want to compare to other site's reviews, depending on how the other site tested, the results can vary quite a bit. To combat this a bit, Toms Hardware (the well known PC review site) did a huge round up of a bunch of different power supplies and the Rocketeer V happened to be one of the ones tested. They provided a great breakdown of all the nitty gritty tech specs on the Rocketeer and how it performed in their test setup that they used for ALL the power supplies they tested and as you can see, the Rocketeer passed and actually was ranked in the top of the power supplies they looked at:

Now, for my side of taking a look at the performance of this power supply.

First off, this is a very efficient power supply compared to many that I have had and owned. At 81% as measured by Toms Hardware, it is in the list of top power supplies out there for efficiency. What does this mean for you? It means that your energy consumption will go down and thus you will have a lower power bill! The power supply also seems to provide a relatively stable 500 watts to the system so you should not have to worry about the power supply damaging any of your components thanks to power fluctuations.

Compared to my Cooler Master that I had before (which to be fair was 450w instead of the 500w in the Rocketeer), the Rocketeer seems to handle my system load much better. Even though the power usage gauge on the Cooler Master only read that I was using around 350 - 400 watts, the Cooler Master would many times struggle on the start and flicker a bit before finally booting. The Rocketeer stably starts up without any flickering and has never caused any of my drives to have problems or any of the lights to flicker or dim in my case. Many times you can tell if your Power Supply is having trouble handling the load by Burning a CD or DVD as it draws more power and the CD/DVD will have some trouble spinning up or create a flawed disk (I noticed this with a cheap 400w power supply I had awhile back). Burning CDs has gone smoothly and there have been no problems with the optical drives on my computer.

Now comes the part that many are usually interested in, noise. Unlike the Cooler Master that was totally on its own for controlling the speed of the single 120mm fan, the Rocketeer has the 80mm fan that is always on, and the 120mm fan that is either Full on or Full off. Because of the self control and single 120mm fan, the Cooler Master was one of the quietest power supplies I have ever had/used so comparing to the Rocketeer I was at first expecting it to be MUCH louder. In fact though, the Rocketeer is a fairly quiet power supply. With the 120mm fan turned off, the 80mm is very quiet and was drowned out by my hard drive cooler and two 80mm case fans. I did notice that when putting a large load (like when playing high performance games), the Rocketeer would tend to get a little bit hotter than usual. It also would not pull as much hot air out of the case and would tend to just have enough power to cool itself (so the whole case tended to get a bit warmer). This is where the 120mm fan comes into play, press that green button on the back of the Rocketeer and it gets a huge boost in cooling power. There is a bit more noise, but still it was drowned out mostly by my 80mm case fans. When the "Turbo" as its called was enabled, the power supply could easily handle cooling itself and acting as a vent for the hot air in the case. Do note that this is a fairly silent 120mm fan and not like one of those crazy loud ones you get on server 120mm fans and such.

Overall with noise and cooling I was impressed. It was fairly quiet and with the Turbo turned on could keep itself and the surrounding area in the case cool. It would be nice to have the option to have the 120mm fan temperature controlled, but it is not a huge issue.

Conclusion:

To sum up my experience with the Rocketeer V from Spire, I think it is a very decent power supply to use on the more demanding systems out there. It provides good stable power with low noise and good cooling, plus relatively high efficiency is a plus for your pocket book. I think Spire can improve on the cables and make them a bit less stiff, and a temp controller option on the 120mm fan would be awesome, but besides those small tweaks this is one awesome power supply that I will be recommending to customers and friends alike!

• The finish of the Power Supply itself and the cables looks great
• Lots of stable power
• Cables are Modular so you can remove ones you do not need
• Well made with good packaging and presentation

• Cables are very stiff
• +4 Permanent Cables should be removable as not everyone needs to use them
• Would be nice if you could select to have 120mm fan temp. controlled

Thanks to Spire Power for the Review Sample!