Its incredibly low price and the fact that it managed to deliver more than its full power at 46°C while ripple stayed well in control in our normal (with a balanced load amongst its rails) load tests made me give it our budget award. You won't find another semi-modular PSU that can achieve the above at this price point. Most budget units have a temperature rating of only 40°C; some have an even lower one at 25°C. So Xigmatek's PSU wins that race by a large margin. To me, one of the most important features in a budget PSU is how tolerable it is to heat since heat tolerance is also a tell-tale sign of how well the platform performs and how tolerable its separate parts are. If a part is underrated, it will quickly fail while the unit is operating with a full load at close to 50°C. Another important factor is a PSU's ability to suppress ripple, another test the Maverick S unit completed more than successfully so long as balanced loads were applied. However, the PSU didn't do all too well otherwise as its load regulation can only be called mediocre while its transient response test results were average only to have its 3.3V rail fail in a rather extreme scenario. As far as Haswell compatibility is concerned, I am pretty sure that the 500 W Maverick unit will power almost every Haswell system that needs up to 500 W; however, Intel also insists on some extreme testing scenarios according to which the unit failed. To be frank, no PSU based on a platform with a group regulation will pass this test successfully as only indy (independent) regulation designs and those with DC-DC converters will be able to do so.

The Maverick S 500 W might not be a good overall performer; however, its low price allowed it to score second place in our price/performance ratio chart. Had I also taken into account its modular design and compact dimensions, it could have easily achieved a higher score. Its most significant drawbacks in terms of performance are its low overall efficiency, the large overshoot I saw on its 5VSB rail during the turn-on tests, and its noisy operation. Since the unit isn't terribly efficient, its fan profile had to be more aggressive than most to protect its components, which includes the low quality Chinese caps that should operate in as cool an environment as possible to avoid any problems. I would definitely feel more comfortable about the unit's reliability had Xigmatech used Teapo caps instead, but they didn't want to increase production cost any further. I would even go as far as to suggest a version of this PSU with better caps and affixed cables instead of modular ones to keep its price tag the same.