The first thing that caught my attention with this product is the Scythe FDB fan. Such a high-quality fan is hardly ever found in highly affordable PSUs. There are branded PSUs with a rifle-bearing fan instead that cost twice as much. Fan quality plays a huge role with PSU longevity, and it affects noise output. That said, with a Cybenetics Standard++ (30 - 35 dBA) rating, you cannot call this PSU quiet, but its platform is only Bronze-rated, so thermal loads can get high, which has the fan spin at higher speeds to handle them. As long as loads stay below 250 W, you won't hear the fan unless you have incredible hearing, but at higher loads, you will.

Overall performance would be much higher if the transient response were better, especially on the minor rails. In general, affordable PSUs are equipped with minor rails that don't have the capacity to deal with transient loads to keep cost low. Indeed, the +12 V rail matters the most, but minor rails are still used, so I have to test them, too. Another improvement could be the addition of a second PCIe connector. This power supply could handle an RTX 3060 and a mid-level CPU, which makes being restricted to a single PCIe connector a great shame. Adding a second PCIe connector to the existing cable also would not pose any issues since it is affixed.

The primary area where most affordable (and not only) PSUs fail is protection features. The Performance 450 W has all of its protection features, including OTP, set correctly, which was a pleasant surprise. MIFCOM paid extra attention here. In small-capacity PSUs like this one, properly configured OCP and OPP mean that the platform won't be damaged if overloaded, especially under high operating temperatures.

Overall, I am satisfied with this PSU given its affordable price, which is why I gave it our Budget award. Its primary competitor is the XPG Pylon 450, which achieves 11% higher overall performance and costs 28% more. At about the same price as the Pylon 450, you can also find the Corsair CX450, which uses a more modern platform and is among the best budget 450 W PSUs.