Silverstone ST60F 600 Watt Modular Power Supply

SilverStone is well known for their extremely stylish cases and enclosures.  Their power supplies are also considered to be high quality.  Today, we are going to take another look at the Strider series of power supplies. The ST60F is the 600 watt variant.  The Strider series offer a multitude of wattages ranging from 350 watts all the way to 1200 watts. Previously, we have reviewed the ST85F, which offered decent performance.

Upon opening the box, you will find the manual (SilverStone now includes a decent manual.  In the past, there was just a small booklet which had tons of specification information on it, but no information on how to install the power supply), black colored screws, velcro straps, zip ties, a set of pre-attached modular cables, an 8-pin PCI-e modular cable, and an AC power cable.

Here are some of the main features and specifications from SilverStone's Website:

The Power Supply:

The power supply features a matte black colored housing and a black colored fan grill, which looks good and is similar to the rest of SilverStone's power supply line up.  Note that the paint job is better than the previous models that we've reviewed.  It is less scratch prone as well.  

There is a SilverStone logo imprinted on the bottom/top of the unit.

Looking at the side of the power supply, there is a SilverStone label with their logo on it, the model number and a condensed specification list.  Note that there are two +12v rails each one supplying up to 35 Amps.  The 3.3v supplies up to 30 Amps and the +5v supplies up to 30 Amps. The efficiency is 80 percent or greater at 20%, 50% and 100% loads. According to the 80Plus test result page, this power supply has a typical efficiency of about 85%, which is great! This gives it an 80Plus Bronze rating.

This sticker indicates that SilverStone has licensed the modular cable technology that Ultra Products has patented.

There is an large honeycomb style grill on the back which allows the 135 mm fan to exhaust hot air and an AC Power Input. Note that there is no power switch.  I did not like this because if I want to cut off power temporarily or there is a problem with the system where the power button fails to work or sparks are flying from a component, I would have to pull out the plug.  This power supply does feature Active PFC, so there is no need for a switch to select the input voltage. 

There are eleven available modular connections on the rear of this power supply.  This power supply is fully modular.  The power supply looks strange with nothing connected to it.  Note that each connection features a label which tells you which rail is supplying power to it.  This is really helpful and more manufacturers should do the samething.

This power supply features the following cables:

-A 24-pin ATX power connector

-A 4-pin +12v CPU power connector

-An 8-pin +12v EPS Power Connector

-1x  8-Pin PCI-Express Power Connector and 4x 6-pin PCI-Express Connectors. *One 6-pin PCI-e connector must be removed in order to use the 8-pin PCI-Express power connector.

-6x Molex Power Connectors

-6x Serial ATA Power Connectors

-2x Floppy Power Connectors

Cooling:

There is a 135mm fan on the bottom of this power supply.  During testing, at idle loads, this fan stayed nearly silent. With loads, the fan barely made a small whirr every couple of seconds while it was transitioning to a higher speed.  The sounds were never bothersome though.  I'm very happy with the noise characteristics of this power supply.

Inside the Power Supply:

* Taking this power supply apart will void the warranty.

Inside the power supply,  there are two black finned heat sinks that are used to cool down the voltage rectifiers.  A smaller black heat sink can be seen at the top of this image.  The main transformer is in the upper right of the image, while the smaller transformer is beneath it, under another heatsink.  The primary capacitors is Nippon-Chemicon branded (105c rated), while the secondary capacitors are Teapo branded.

The Primary capacitors is Nippon-Chemicon branded.

The secondary capacitors are Teapo branded.

The fan inside is an Young Lin branded fan. It has the model number DFB132512M with a maximum draw of 2.4 Watts.

For this power supply, the test system consists of the following:

-Antec Nine Hundred Case

-Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Quad Core Processor @ 3.4 GHz (1.4v)

-ZeroTherm Nirvana 120 Heatsink

-eVGA nForce 680i SLi Motherboard

-4GB (2GB x 2) of OCZ Platinum DDRII-1066 Memory

-320GB x 4 Western Digital 7200RPM 16MB Cache Hard Drives

-2x nVIDIA GeForce 8800GTS (G92) Video Cards @ 715MHz Core / 1000 MHz Memory

-Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 Digital Sound Card

-Asus 16x DVD-RAM / 18x Samsung DVD-RAM Drives

-4x 120MM fans, 1x 200mm fan

-2x CCFL Lights

(Multimeter Results)

*For additional / larger pictures of the SilverStone ST60F 600 Watt Power Supply, Click Here

*Voltages are at a 'Max Load' for a typical gaming computer, running Orthos, Sisoft Sandra Hard Drive benchmark and 3DMark06 CPU Test 1 and 2 / Deep Freeze HDR test, and read with a Multi-Meter.

Capacitor Brands:

Primary: Excellent

Secondary: Great

Primary: Nippon-Chemicon

Secondary: Teapo

Voltage Results:

+The results were excellent for this power supply, the results being well within range.  The voltages budged a bit when transitioning from an idle state to a load state, but still remained quite strong.

Stability Results:

+Everything ran fine during testing, the system was stable and performed the tests as expected. 

Fan Speed Impressions:

+During the tests, the fan speed did not vary much, being nearly silent in idle mode. A few whirring sounds could be heard, but they were not annoying. Nice!

Installation:

+ Installation of this power supply went well.  No issues fitting inside the test system's case.  The modular cables helped a lot in keeping the inside of the case neat and tidy.  The velcro straps and zip ties that were included could be helpful, but I did not feel that they were necessary in my case.

Conclusion:

This power supply would be ideal for anyone looking to build a multi core gaming / workstation system with two video cards.  It is Crossfire X Certified for up to two ATI Radeon 4870's, which is fantastic. The amount of available power connectors is adequate and up to date. The fan is also very quiet and is great to find in a 600 watt class power supply. SilverStone power supplies used to be a little noisy in the fan department, but that has changed.  At around $80 after a rebate, it is a nicely priced power supply.  If there was no rebate, this power supply would come in at around $100, which is still a great deal.  Overall, this is an excellent power supply that offers great performance for the price and should be purchased by anyone looking for a nicely priced quiet PSU with high efficiency, great output performance, and build quality.

Pros +

-Excellent power output

-Three Year Warranty

-Fan is quiet at typical loads

-Fully modular cabling

-Offered at a reasonable price

Cons -

-Could offer more 6+2 pin power connectors.

Techaddicts.net would like to give this power supply the Editors' Choice Award!

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