Specifications

The PSU is only 80 Plus Bronze certified, which keeps its retail price low, and it doesn't have any modular cables nor is it, according to our test results, Haswell ready, which may come as a shock to most users that aren't terribly familiar with PSUs; but many affordable units don't meet Intel's strict requirements for Haswell compatibility, so you should pay additional attention to the PSU on your short list if you have a new setup that includes a Haswell CPU. We should also stress that your PSU will still easily pass Intel's Haswell requirements if it isn't compatible with the newest ATX v.2.4 spec but its secondary side uses DC-DC converters. An easy way to figure out whether it does is by looking at the power specifications table. If the +12V rail can deliver nearly the unit's full power alone, it almost always features DC-DC converters, which would allow it to easily cope with Haswell's sleep states.

Continuing on with our analysis of the ST60F-ESB's specifications, we are happy to see that this PSU features a full set of protections. These obviously includes OTP (Over Temperature Protection), a feature we deem essential. Silverstone utilizes a 120 mm sleeve-bearing fan. Nothing fancy qualitatively speaking, it will still get the job done. Like we said in the prologue, the unit is, like most Silverstone PSUs, very compact. You definitely won't run into any compatibility issues with standard ATX cases, and the price Silverstone asks for the unit looks low, though we won't comment on it any further as we still have to calculate the unit's price-to-performance ratio. The warranty for the North American region is only one year long, a very small period that will definitely hamper sales. It is thankfully set to three years in the EU, which is long enough for a budget PSU.

The +12 V's capacity is, in comparison to the unit's full power, relatively low, which shows that this PSU doesn't use DC-DC converters to generate the minor rails. As we discovered later on, it doesn't even feature an independent (indy) regulation design, which makes its performance with unbalanced loads mediocre at best. The minor rails are pretty strong for the category of this PSU, and the 5VSB rail has the minimum capacity generally allotted to the rail in a modern PSU.

Cables & Connectors, Power Distribution

Silverstone has equipped this PSU with an adequate number of connectors, including four PCIe ones, which is rare in the budget category. This also means that it can easily feed two mid-end VGAs and all other system components of a gaming system simultaneously. All cables are long enough given this unit will most likely be installed into a mid-tower or smaller case, while the distance between connectors is fine, although placing the SATA connectors a little closer to one another could prove useful to some of us. Finally, all connectors use the standard AWG18 gauges recommended by the ATX specification.

We have nothing to comment on when it comes to the PSU's power distribution because it features a single +12V rail.