Silverstone has announced it has a new series of somewhat cheaper power supplies available in Europe, the Essential Series. There are currently two units, the 550W rated SST-ET550-B, and 650W SST-ET650-B. Both units come from Sirtec (High Power) and bear 80 PLUS Bronze certification (@115 V) rated at 40 °C continuous. They have fixed cabling but welded into flat ribbons.
Both these Essential Series models come with single powerfull +12V rail which can deliver up to 42 A, or 50A in case of SST-ET650-B. For this purpose there are two 6+2pin PCIe connectors on the 550W model and four in case of the 650W one. Although this platform uses group design, Silverstone already decreased the power on the minor rails, resulting in 18 (20) A @+3.3 V and 16 (17) A @+5 V, or 110 and 120 W combined. Hopefully it will be able to manage crossload regulation in spec.
The company claims both the Essential Series units are very silent with their 120mm fan spinning under 500 RPM (all the way up to about 60% load), which is very nice for rather cheap unit. Both the units are covered by 3year warranty. The recommended selling price is 53.5 and 60.6 Euros (as it is mostly intended for system integrators).