Cougar LX Series 600 W Power Supply

1. Introduction2. Bundle & Cabling3. External4. Internal5. Methodology & Testing6. Closing Thoughts7. View All Pages

We know not everyone can afford a £100+ power supply, so today we are looking at a new 650 watt unit from Cougar currently on sale at Overclockers UK for only £60 inc vat.

This unit is 80 Plus Bronze Certified, fully modular and has a single +12v rail to deal with high power devices.

Cougar are only making two LX power supplies in this range, a 500 Watt unit and a 600 Watt unit. Both are Bronze certified and fully modular. which will certainly appeal to the audience building a system inside a space restricted chassis.

Features

• Compact size – only 140mm in length, fits a majority of systems
• Fully Modular – Connect only the cables you need for less clutter & better airflow
• HDB Fan Powered – Hydro Dynamic Bearing Fan, extended durability & lower noise levels
• Fan Curve fine tuning – advanced technology for better cooling quality
• Impressive operation at 40 degrees ambient temperature
• 80 Plus Bronze Certified – reaching efficiency of up to 88%
• Compliant with ErP Lot 2013 – Energy consumption in standby is <0.5W
• Support for Multi-GPU technology – Suppoerts PCI Express 3.0 VGA cards with 6+2Pin PCI-E connectors.
• Ultra Stable Voltage Outputs – DC to DC technology for enchanced voltage stability
• Single +12V DC Source
• 5 Year Warranty
• Strong safeguards including OCP, OPP, OVP, UVP & SCP
• Optimized Over Current Protection – Your components will operate stably and be protected from harm.

The Cougar LX Series 600 watt power supply arrives in a dark box with an image of the product on the front along with some basic specifications. We can see Cougar are offering a 3 year warranty with this particular power supply. Its actually not very clear, but they offer a 5 year warranty inside Europe. 115VAC territories get the 3 year coverage.

Our particular sample box received some rough treatment in shipping but the supply itself inside luckily wasn't damaged.

It certainly is information overload on the back of the box.

Inside the box is a regional specific power connector, some cable tidies for the system build, and a user manual alongside some mounting screws.

Connectors

– 1 x 20+4-Pin ATX12V/EPS12V
– 1 x 4+4-Pin ATX12V/EPS12V
– 4 x 6+2-Pin-PCIe
– 6 x SATA
– 3 x 4-Pin-Molex
– Warranty: 5yr

Cougar supply four PCIe connectors which is enough for a reasonable dual card SLI or Crossfire system, although you may be running in the upper 20% of power draw under load, depending on the cards you are using. The connectors use 18 AWG cables.

The Cougar LX Series 600 Watt power supply isn't a bad looking power supply. Its not going to win any awards on the catwalk, but overall its reasonable looking. The paint work is pretty good too.

When I first lifted the power supply out of the box I heard some rattling sounds inside and a little bit of the binding glue which normally holds the components in place – fell out, shown in the image above. We inspected inside the power supply later and nothing was damaged – however this has clearly come loose during shipping.

A large fan is positioned behind a large grill with the Cougar logo taking pride of place in the centre.

One side of the power supply is home to the vent system, alongside the power connector and switch.

On the other side we have the modular bay, with all the cable positions clearly labelled. It was a little disappointing to see that instead of printing the port identities on the chassis – Cougar just placed a large sticker on the metal – ours was peeling off already as you can see in the image above.

Cougar LX Series 600 W Power Supply
DC Output	+3.3V	+5V	+12V	-12V	+5Vsb
Max Output	24A	20A	49A	0.3A	3A
Total Power	130W		588W
	600W

The single +12V rail is able to deliver 49 amps which translates into 588 Watts total. The minor rails show as very strong actually for a power supply of this capacity.

Cougar may have their name highlighted at the top of the fan sticker, but reading lower down we can see it is a Power Logic HDB fan, model number PLA12025S12M ZP. Rated specifications show that under most situations it should not spin too fast. Something we will test soon.

Cougar LX Series 600 W Power Supply Gallery

Build quality is nothing stellar, but it is reasonably good overall. Some of the soldering could be better however.

This power supply is made by OEM partner HEC and it looks like one of their older platforms, which has been slightly modified.  There are two DC-DC converters on the secondary side to drive the +3.3V and +5V rails.

I was expecting to see slightly larger (or more) heatsinks in this particular unit, especially considering the modest bronze levels of efficiency.

It is disappointing to see TEAPO capacitors in this unit but I was expecting it beforehand. I would have been more surprised to see 105c rated Rubycon. The primary capacitor is a Chinese CapXon, rated 330uF, 400V. To make matters worse, it is only 85c rated which gives me a few concerns. There is no over temperature protection in this particular unit either.

Filtering caps in the secondary stage are by another low cost Chinese brand – TEAPO. Japanese capacitors would raise the production costs dramatically but its not very reassuring to see such low grade capacitors in both stages. Not a very impressive overall choice of capacitors in this unit to be honest. There is a point to be made when people say you get what you pay for.

Correctly testing power supplies is a complex procedure and KitGuru have configured a test bench which can deliver up to a 2,000 watt DC load. We test ambient temperatures at 35c in our environment to greater reflect warmer internal chassis conditions.

We use combinations of the following hardware:
• SunMoon SM-268
• CSI3710A Programmable DC load (+3.3V and +5V outputs)
• CSI3711A Programmable DC load (+12V1, +12V2, +12V3, and +12V4)
• Extech Power Analyzer
• Extech MultiMaster MM570 digital multimeter
• SkyTronic DSL 2 Digital Sound Level Meter (6-130dBa)
• Digital oscilloscope (20M S/s with 12 Bit ADC)
• Variable Autotransformer, 1.4 KVA

DC Output Load Regulation
Combined DC Load	+3.3V		+5V		+12V		+5VSB		-12V
	A	V	A	V	A	V	A	V	A	V
60W	0.90	3.33	0.95	5.10	3.90	12.22	0.50	5.02	0.20	-12.04
120W	1.60	3.31	1.62	5.07	8.20	12.15	1.00	5.02	0.20	-12.04
300W	3.00	3.28	3.13	5.00	21.94	12.00	1.50	5.01	0.20	-12.05
450W	4.15	3.24	4.12	4.90	33.55	11.97	2.00	5.01	0.30	-12.06
600W	5.17	3.19	5.33	4.88	45.30	11.82	2.50	5.00	0.30	-12.07

Load regulation is fair, there is quite a bit of fluctuations on all rails as can be seen in the table above. Between 4% and 5% actually which is one of the poorer results we have seen in recent years.

Cougar LX Series 600 W Power Supply	Maximum Load
	612W

We managed to get 612W out of the Cougar LX Series 600 W before it shut down gracefully.

Next we want to try Cross Loading. This basically means loads which are not balanced. If a PC for instance needs 500W on the +12V outputs but something like 30W via the combined 3.3V and +5V outputs then the voltage regulation can fluctuate badly.

Cross Load Testing	+3.3V		+5V		+12V		-12V		+5VSB
	A	V	A	V	A	V	A	V	A	V
590W	1.0	3.33	1.0	5.09	46.0	11.82	0.2	-12.05	0.50	5.03
145W	12.0	3.17	15.0	4.85	2.0	12.19	0.2	-12.01	0.50	5.01

The supply passed the cross load test, although there were noticeable dips on the rails.

We then used an oscilloscope to measure AC ripple and noise present on the DC outputs. We set the oscilloscope time base to check for AC ripple at both high and low ends of the spectrum. ATX12V V2.2 specification for DC output ripple and noise is defined in the ATX 12V power supply design guide.

ATX12V Ver 2.2 Noise/Ripple Tolerance
Output	Ripple (mV p-p)
+3.3V	50
+5V	50
+12V1	120
+12V2	120
-12V	120
+5VSB	50

Obviously when measuring AC noise and ripple on the DC outputs the cleaner (less recorded) means we have a better end result. We measured this AC signal amplitude to see how closely the unit complied with the ATX standard.

AC Ripple (mV p-p)
DC Load	+3.3V	+5V	+12V	5VSB
75W	20	10	10	15
150W	25	15	20	15
300W	25	15	30	20
450W	35	20	35	30
600W	45	25	45	40

Noise suppression rates as acceptable, however we do need to point out the less than stellar +3.3V result at full load, of 45mV – just inside the industry rated tolerance parameters. The +12V rail peaks at 45mV under full load conditions.

These are not the best results we have seen in recent months, but technically the unit has not failed any of the AC Ripple tests above.

Efficiency (%)
75W	82.12
150W	86.12
300W	88.14
450W	87.32
600W	86.19

Efficiency peaks at just over 88 percent at around 300 watt – 320 watt load. This drops down to just over 86% at full load.

We take the issue of noise very seriously at KitGuru and this is why we have built a special home brew system as a reference point when we test noise levels of various components. Why do this? Well this means we can eliminate secondary noise pollution in the test room and concentrate on components we are testing. It also brings us slightly closer to industry standards, such as DIN 45635.

Today to test the Power Supply we have taken it into our acoustics room environment and have set our SkyTronic DSL 2 Digital Sound Level Meter (6-130dBa) one meter away from the unit. We have no other fans running so we can effectively measure just the noise from the unit itself.

As this can be a little confusing for people, here are various dBa ratings in with real world situations to help describe the various levels.

KitGuru noise guide
10dBA – Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves
20-25dBA – Whisper
30dBA – High Quality Computer fan
40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refridgerator
50dBA – Normal Conversation
60dBA – Laughter
70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer
80dBA – City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal
90dBA – Motorcycle or Lawnmower
100dBA – MP3 Player at maximum output
110dBA – Orchestra
120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine
130dBA – Threshold of Pain
140dBA – Military Jet takeoff/Gunshot (close range)
160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum

Noise (dBA)
75W	<28.0
150W	<28.0
300W	36.7
450W	38.3
600W	41.6

The fan spins slowly when load is below 250 watts, but it spins up very quickly at higher loads, and becomes a little intrusive when the power supply is delivering over 500 watts. Ideally you want to be running this supply at between 200 watts and 400 watts – which actually accommodates many many enthusiast systems today. Yes, believe it or not, very few people need a 1000 watt power supply for their system.

Temperature (c)
	Intake	Exhaust
75W	35	39
150W	35	44
300W	37	51
450W	41	57
600W	44	65

The large fan works hard as load gets higher, but the lowish efficiency levels force fairly high temperatures at full load situations. It is not really very practical to be running this supply at close to 600 watts for extended periods of time anyway.

Maximum load	Efficiency
612W	85.9

At 612W the Cougar LX Series 600 Watt supply drops to 85.9%. This is not a viable ‘real world’ situation, but its interesting nonetheless.

Testing the Cougar LX Series 600 W was a fairly dull experience. Having tested many Cougar power supplies in recent years, I did go into this review with certain expectations, and for the most part I had the analysis fairly close to the results we achieved.

The +12V rail performance is very good and it is certainly capable of powering a good gaming system with one or two graphics cards.

Initial impressions for me where actually fairly positive. Build quality is good, and its not the ugliest looking power supply you could buy on a budget. Its a fully modular design which makes cable routing and building into a space restricted chassis fairly pleasant.

I criticised the fan a little on the previous page, and while under heavy load it can get fairly loud, under most normal operating conditions it isn't that intrusive.

Internally, we get what we pay for. Cougar have cut costs by incorporating cheap Chinese Capacitors into the primary and secondary stages. While we can expect this at the price point, I was a little disappointed that they didn't opt for the higher grade 105c rated Caps, rather than 85c. Paying another £5 for a better Capacitor selection would work for me.

Reassuringly Cougar have opted to offer a fairly substantial 5 year warranty with this unit within Europe.

You can buy the Cougar LX Series 600 W from Overclockers UK for £60.95 inc vat HERE.

Discuss on our Facebook page, over HERE.

Pros:

• 5 year warranty in Europe, which is commendable.
• Decent build quality.
• Able to deliver slightly more than 600 watts.
• Fairly silent at lower loads.
• Fully modular.
• Strong +12V rail performance.
• 4x PCI e connectors.

Cons:

• low grade Chinese capacitors throughout.
• no screen printing on chassis – they use giant stickers.
• 3.3V rail performance raises an eyebrow.
• Lack of over temperature protection.
• Bronze efficiency seems almost redundant in 2017.

KitGuru says: Its not going to win any awards on the catwalk, but for the price and considering the healthy 5 year warranty in EU it is pretty good value for money.

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