As we mentioned on other articles and reviews, the first place we like to take a look when opening a power supply to have a hint about its quality is its filtering stage. The recommend components for this stage are two ferrite coils, two ceramic capacitors (Y capacitors, usually blue), one metalized polyester capacitor (X capacitor) and one MOV (Metal-Oxide Varistor). Very low-end power supplies use fewer components than that, usually removing the MOV and the first coil.

The transient filtering stage from this power supply is very simple but carries all recommended components, plus two extra Y capacitors and one extra X capacitor. The MOV is located on the right side of the right coil on Figure 8, covered by a black rubber protection.

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Figure 7: Transient filtering stage (part 1).

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Figure 8: Transient filtering stage (part 2).

Now let’s have a more detailed discussion on the components used on Rocketfish 550 W.