Silverstone Strider Essential & Strider Plus 500W Power Supply Review

Silverstone Strider Essential ST50F-P 500W – Page 1

The box which holds the ST50F-P Strider Plus 500W power supply is actually more basic than that of the budget version but significantly larger and much stronger. Inside the box, the power supply is protected by just a bubble bag, yet the cardboard walls of this box can handle quite a lot of punishment.

The rear of the power supply is focused on promoting the most basic features of the model, via graphs and images; only in English this time.

The bundle of the ST50F-P is actually interesting. Besides the basic bundle of manual, mounting screws and a power cable, Silverstone also provides a set of thumbscrews, a few cable ties and five cable straps.

This is a fully modular power supply and all of the cables, including the 24-pin ATX cable, come detached from the main body. The cables are quite basic, with black sleeving and color-coded wires.

Silverstone sprayed the chassis of the ST50F-P with a satin black color and is using a bright blue cooling fan beneath a black round finger guard, in an attempt to enhance the visual appeal of the power supply. The chassis is only 140mm deep; good news for people with very tight cases.

Once again, the sticker with the electrical specifications of the ST50F-P is on the right side of the power supply, where it will be visible if the side panel of the case is windowed over the PSU compartment area.

The left side of the power supply is home to several stickers, mostly with serial and part numbers, including a 80Plus bronze certification sticker.

The whole company logo can be seen embossed on the top side of the power supply. The logo is very appealing but it would be better if it was to the rotated 90 degrees counter-clockwise, as it will now be facing towards the rear of the case from a windowed side panel, not the user.

As this is a fully modular design, the rear side is home to the connectors of the modular cables. There are six connectors; from right to the left there is the ATX 24-pin cable connector, three IDE/SATA cable connectors, one PCI-E cable connector and one 8-pin EPS connector. A large sticker with the legend can be seen as well.