The truth is that highly affordable units like the VS650 are the money makers because they are sold in great numbers, which means every brand seriously enrolled in the PSU market has to have mainstream PSU offerings. The challenge is the fine balance between the final price and performance and reliability. This is a tough job to do properly, but Corsair has a lot of experience with power supplies, and its people did a good job with the VS650. Surely, it doesn't set any performance records, but the fact alone that it managed to outlive all of my tough tests means a lot.

Usually, I am extra cautious when testing mainstream PSUs because a failure won't just result in fireworks, but may damage my equipment. The Chroma I use is highly tolerant to PSU failures, but that is not the case for my very expensive power analyzer that may take quite the blow if a power supply's primary side explodes, which is why I avoid testing incredibly cheap PSUs.

The major pros of the VS650—next to its low price—are its efficient 5VSB rail, three-year warranty, which is long enough for such a product, and Cybenetics and 80 PLUS ratings. Samples sent to independent labs for certification show the faith a brand has in the product, and that it doesn't have anything to hide. While Cybenetics ratings are much tougher to get then 80 PLUS ones, the VS650 still managed to get their ETA-S efficiency (83.258% overall efficiency) and LAMBDA-S++ noise (33.69 dB[A] overall noise output) ratings.