Cougar Solution Chassis Review

Today’s test system will give us a good idea of how well this case works in terms of thermal and acoustic performance.

Processor: AMD Phenom X4 965 Black Edition @ 3.9 GHz.
Motherboard: ASUS M4A785TD- M Evo
Cooler: Akasa Venom Voodoo CPU Cooler
Memory: 4GB Corsair DDR3 1600MHz
Graphics Cards: AMD Radeon 6450 HD (GPU @ 850 MHZ, Memory Clock @ 1000 MHz)
Power Supply: Akasa Venom Power 750W
Boot Drive: OCZ Vertex II 60GB SSD (OS only)

OS: Windows 7 Home Edition 64bit
Digital Sound Level Noise Decibel Meter Style 2

We are using the default fan configuration, which includes only a single exhaust fan as well as the power supply intake and exhaust. In total, a further seven fans could be fitted – 2 on the top, 2 at the front, 2 on the side and 1 at the bottom. Obviously noise emissions would increase with more fans in the case.

While this case is certainly one of Cougar's more cost effective designs, the thermal performance is a little disappointing. Cougar could have improved this by including another intake fan by default, sucking in cold air to help cool all of the components. Unfortunately, in this stock configuration we were not at all impressed.

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