Lately we have been receiving a lot of requests from a lot of manufacturers to review a lot of power supplies .. and I do mean a lot. Next to me are 3 PSU's that are in queue for a test and yet another two have been sent to Dave a.k.a. WildStyle for review.

What's going on you ask? Well, never in the history of the PC have PSU's become more important than they are right now. It all has to do with our massive need for power consumption. Dual-Core processors, SLI/Crossfire based multi-GPU core graphics cards... yes, we need a lot of juice to keep our hardware running. So with that being said, today we'll review a PSU from that wicked company SilverStone. The SilverStone Technology, Inc. homebase is stationed in Taiwan. They specialize in designing low acoustic and high performance PC and HTPC enclosures, power supplies and other accessories for the PC enthusiast market.

We will have a look at their ST60F, the Strider 600 Watts power supply. A power supply with four +12 Volts rails, a completely modular design and SLI ready power supply.

Modular, what's that you might ask? Well, the dull beige colored PC's are no more. We want properly fashioned cooling, see-through windows and preferably lit like the Eiffel tower PC's so we can actually look at the inside.

We all want the cool stuff, so now have the beautiful looking cases where you can look inside, but that resulted in irritation with all the yellow, red, and black wires coming from that dull PSU. So the PSU got another function: aesthetics. It needs to look as good as a gorgeous blonde. By organizing cables and by giving you the option to actually modify the wires you want to use that problem was solved.
The two topics mentioned above, from a consumer point of view, have been by far the most important development for PSUs, namely stable high output quality power distribution and the option for modability, using only the wires that you need. Almost ANY manufacturer has picked up on this trend and it has become a very big market for sure.

The PSU we will be testing today is a heavily built SLI/Crossfire ready piece of gear, which we'll put to the test.

You will notice that all supplied connectors are nicely wrapped in a black colored foil/plastic and are detachable. That is looking good for sure. It's advanced cable management that facilitates the installation and gives you the option to only use the required cables. It carries the label "Strider" and this model comes with a fantastic 600 Watts rating. It's supposed to be a a high-end PSU, which is ready for SLI and Crossfire as it has quad 12 volts rails and active PFC, and a silent fan. We'll explain all that to you over the next pages though.

This Trider PSU is manufactured by SilverStone and carries the model label ST60F..

Let's startup the review and have an overall look. In today's test we'll stress the PSU with a ATI X1900XT Crossfire setup that for sure will traumatize the Strider.