As consumers, everywhere we go, we are faced with celebrity endorsed products. From sports stars on your cereal box, to actors promoting insurance, it seems that every brand out there tries to get a leg-up on the competition by using familiar, household names in their advertising campaigns.

The market for consumer electronics and computer hardware has been generally immune to this sponsorship phenomenon — that is, with one exception. There are a host of products out there stamped with the name of a certain Johnathan ‘Fatal1ty' Wendel. Fatal1ty, if you're not familiar, has on the order of 30 “notably accomplished” gaming tournament placements on Wikipedia, including five 1st place finishes for Quake III Arena.

Whether Mr. Wendel's gaming prowess gives him any sort of above-average knack for choosing quality computer hardware I'll leave for you to decide today as we look at OCZ's Fatl1ty 550W Profess1onal Series PSU.


The OCZ Fatal1ty 550W PSU comes in a nicely decorated red box, complete with the Fatal1ty logo, and some feature listings. Specifications, from OCZ's website, follow:




Back in January, site owner Shawn Knight had a chance to look at the 700W version of this power supply and was thoroughly impressed. That PSU, however, was not modular like the 550W we have today and sported a single-rail design, while today's PSU uses dual 12V rails. Continue on as we see if the OCZ Fatal1ty 550W PSU can deliver as promising of performance as did its 700W sibling.