Aspire Chameleon Series 550w Power Supply

The rear of the Chameleon 550w unit shows a green UV reactive master switch, a rheostat and a three position switch.  Beginning with the rheostat; it is a chrome knob giving the user control on the fan’s power so that it has a range of running between 80 – 100%.  The three position switch if you look closely has a colored circular sticker at each of its setting positions: Red, Green and Blue.  Moving the switch to a specific color changes the color of the LEDs on the fan to that selected color.

The cables are beautifully wrapped in a green (UV reactive of course) mesh making for clean and well managed case environment.  The plastic power connectors are likewise colored UV reactive green and bring out the coloring of the mesh covered lines that much more.

Cracking it open

Aspire has and interesting method of keeping things together.  Two of the opposing side panels have a Phillips head screw at each corner.  With this done, the sides effectively fall free as you can see below.  Ingeniously simple and effective.

Here we get a nice look at the green anodized heatsink within.  The fact that five of the six sides are vented with a 120mm fan doing the blowing, they should serve as more than adequate.

What did strike me as odd was a small plastic fold covering a good bit of the rear ventilation area of the unit.  With all the sides being vented and the only side facing the exterior of the case being partially blocked, air will be forced through the less restrictive sides blowing the warm air back into the case.  If these sides were not vented this warm air would be forced out of the rear vent area and most importantly outside the case.

  

Give me power Mr. Scott!

Installation and operation was without incident.  The 80-100% rheostat worked wonderfully.  In fact, with the fan running at 80%, the unit was all but silent.  This to a lot of us is one of the most important issues when shopping for power supplies.  The three position LED color selector gave options of selecting lighting to augment a case’s color scheme, case mod or even your mood.  With the LED fan being a 120mm number, the amount of light given off was impressive while not being overpowering.  Here are a few shots of the fan’s lighting.

     

We would be remiss if we didn’t show you the impressive UV reactive wire sheathing and power connectors.  These were reacting to a small 4” UV tube light mounted at the center of the roof of our test box.

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