I would, first of all, like to stress the fact that Silverstone is one of the very few companies with the courage to send me budget units for evaluation as these naturally won't set new world records in terms of performance, and there are manufacturers who avoid sending their mainstream products for review since they are unsure of the outcome. With that said, lets move on to the most important part of the review since the conclusion is read by nearly everyone who takes a look, so here are my findings in regards to this product. The ST60F-ESB's biggest asset is surely its low price because it puts the unit on the to-buy list of budget-oriented users who want a strong, reliable, and affordable PSU that doesn't sacrifice any of its protection features, and the ST60F-ESB performed well in that regard since it survived every one of my incredibly stressful tests to prove that it is reliable and safe enough despite its low price tag. However, there is a catch: Its outdated platform lacks DC-DC converters, which prevents it from performing adequately in certain situations and passing the Haswell compatibility test, as the PSU failed to comply with ATX specifications once I stressed the unit with highly unbalanced loads. I know for a fact that such scenarios are incredibly unlikely to occur in real life, but Intel sets the rules for Haswell compatibility testing. Ripple on the 3.3V rail should also be lower and adding high ambient temperatures into the mix even has the 5VSB rail produce poor ripple suppression. The hold-up time I measured was very low for the standards of this category, and I, to be frank, hate seeing today's PSUs come with unsleeved cables. I realize that they tried to cut cost by as much as possible to offer this product up at such a low price, but many users wouldn't mind paying a couple more bucks for fully sleeved cables, although one could argue that a significant portion of users won't care about sleeved cables if they look to, say, power an office PC or a download station.

To sum up, this is another budget unit by a company that has managed to establish itself in both the high- and mainstream segment. If Silverstone were to ask me to aid them in improving this product, I would advise them to fix this unit's low hold-up time while also looking into the increased ripple on the 3.3V and 5VSB rails. As for the poor performance with unbalanced loads: I know that nothing can be done with such an outdated platform there as the only option would be to lower the unit's already high maximum combined power output for the minor rails. With everything said and done, I won't give Silverstone's ST60F-ESB our budget award even though it managed to score a top spot in the performance-per-dollar chart since I spotted many downsides with the most significant being the, in my opinion, very short warranty period in the North American region, which, along with the low quality caps in the secondary side, could spell trouble to future owners. I do wonder why Silverstone won't extend the warranty period in the States since they cover this product with a three year warranty in the EU. Silverstone will hopefully look into this matter in the near future.