[section_title title=Conclusion]Conclusion
As most will know, the Power Supply is an integral part in any PC build and can make or break the whole system. If your PSU is not powerful enough, or not stable it can cause issues which can lead to shorts and even damaging other components inside your system, a problem none of us want to have to endure. With that being said I did not have an ATE load tester to perform my testing but I did user a multimeter to perform some tests on the ST50F and it does feature and 80 PLUS Gold rating so should be fairly reliable.
Performance is going to be the most important thing when considering a power supply because as mentioned it can have an effect on just about every other single component in the build if it is not up to scratch. Again, I did not have an ATE load tester for my performance tests but the results I got while using a multi-meter were very impressive, especially while the system was idling. Turning back a page to the performance results and you will see that both the 3.3V and 5V lines were spot on when idling and the 12V were sitting at 11.9V which is only .1V off. Even when using the system at load settings the readings were not too far off and were well inside the respective ranges.
When it comes down to the aesthetics of the ST50F, it surely is nothing all that impressive but it’s not really meant to be. The ST50F is designed to pack more of a punch than to be a show horse in my opinion and it shows. The general look of the ST50F is that of a standard power supply. One of the things I will mention is most power supplies of this sort just leave all their wires bare except for the 24pin and what I mean by this is things like the 8-pin PCI connectors will have the 8 individual wires going to the plug, whereas SilverStone have gone a put a nice casing around them and while it is see through it will help keep them all together and out of harms way a bit.
The Price of the ST50F is quite competitive, having a look around some companies are selling 500W 80 PLUS Bronze PSUs for a similar price which isn’t bad. SilverStone seem to have done a good job on pricing their Strider Range of PSUs and the 500W ST50F-ESG offers good value for the money. The Power Supply market is very crowded and more companies offering more competitive prices only results in good things for us as consumers.
If you are in the market for a 500W power supply and are not worried about it being modular or fancy looking and are just looking for something to power your rig with than the SilverStone ST50F is definitely a worthy candidate and should be considered.
I would like to thank SilverStone for sending the St50F in for review and look forward to seeing more from them in the future.
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