Silverstone Strider 850w ST85F PSU

Appearance

The ST85F is finished in a matt black lead-free paint and has a minimal amount of shine. As you can see from the image showing the top of the ST85F below, the sample unit I received had several scratches in its paintwork.

A more severe case of this was seen on the previous ST75F review and the problem raised with Silverstone. However, as the ST85F wasn’t packaged any better it looks like we can see this problem repeating itself.

The back of the unit is vented with a honeycomb mesh grill complete with an LED status indicator that changes from red to green when the PSU is powered on. You may also notice that there is no 110/240v switch present. This is because the ST85F, like many other modern PSU’s is able to auto-detect the input voltage.

A welcome change to the ST85F over the previous Strider models has to be the use of a new power switch. Many people seem to have had problems with the switches on the older Strider units and hopefully this change has permenantly resolved the issue.

I’ve always admired the Silverstone Strider modular range for providing the ability to tweak the units output voltages via adjustable potentiometers on the side of the unit. However, on the ST85F it would seem that Silverstone have done away with this great feature. Lets hope that the rail stability is good enough to warrant not needing this.

Due to the increased fan size on the ST85F (135mm vs 120mm), the bottom of the unit is now almost entirely consumed by the fan and it’s grill. This makes the unit slightly more visually appealing than the ST60F and ST75F that utilised a 120mm fan placed in an off-centre position.

Just like the ST75F, the ST85F comes with a total of 11 modular connectors. You will also notice that the ST85F is fully modular, and therefore all cables including the ATX and EPS connectors can be removed if required.