Although the Strider Essential ST50F-ES doesn't set new performance records, it still manages to achieve a very high price/performance ratio thanks to its competitive price and decent overall performance. It surely lacks some essential features most users will miss, like fully sleeved and/or modular cables, but this category's main concern is to decrease costs while keeping performance at decent levels, something that is not as easy as it sounds. I can, after having conducted all the tests and with all the relevant data in hand, safely state that Silverstone/Sirtec did a good job with this unit—it didn't fail any of my tests with the exception of the hold-up time test. I usually expect some sort of trouble when I test such mainstream PSUs, especially since most of them are only truly rated at up to 25-30°C and hell breaks loose with anything over 40°C, but I thankfully had an easy-going testing session this time around since the ST50F-ES has a higher operating temperature threshold than its competitors in this category. The fact that the small Strider endured my abuse without any complaints means that it is very reliable, and its budget price does, on top of that, make it a good deal if you are looking for an affordable branded PSU to power a small system. The only compromise occurs during the cable management process, since the lack of sleeving will not yield an optically pleasing result, but there aren't very many cables which makes them easy to hide inside of a chassis.

To sum up, the performance-per-dollar graph does, in this case, dictate that I give this unit our budget award, so I did. Surely not a record breaker, but it will get the job done just fine and will not blow your budget. If only all cables were sleeved while keeping the same price, like the competition managed to do, but I haven't reviewed the competition's offer (see Corsair CX500) and cannot comment on its performance as compared to the ST50F-ES. Silverstone also used nothing but Teapo caps in their unit instead of including lower quality ones (CapXon, Samxon, etc.) to make sure that the PSU will keep performing well for quite a while.