Cougar CMX 1000W Power Supply Review
Overview
We (well I) have been really impressed with the latest products from Cougar, with both the 700M and 700K walking away with a Gold award and Platinum award in recent reviews! So what will I make of the latest Cougar product to drop through the pcG door; the Cougar CMX 1000W
|
|
The Cougar CMX 1000W came in a large smart black ‘n orange box with an oversized image of the PSU on the front, with the Cougar logo taking centre stage. The front of the box goes on to highlight Cougar’s Vortex fan technology and the fact that this PSU is 80+ Bronze rated (see here for more detail) and the fact that the PSU has a three year warranty.
The back of the box highlights various features and technical information in numerous languages. In addition to this there’s a wealth of information on the main features of the CMX PSU range (see Specifications/Features below).
On opening the box we can see that the Cougar CMX 1000W PSU isn’t very well packaged with the PSU itself just wrapped in bubble-wrap and left loose in an oversized box. Although, I did find all of the contents to be in good condition (luckily!)…
In the box other than the Power Supply itself we find a bundle of modular (flat) cables, a very basic user guide and a pack of four screws.
At the time of writing the Cougar CMX 1000W is retailing for approximately £150 on Amazon
Specifications/Features
courtesy of Cougar
* Additional details available here
First Impressions
First impressions are both good and well, not so good. Let’s start with the good, the Cougar CMX 1000W Power Supply is one good looking PSU, the burnt orange metallic paint really gives the PSU a lift. The top 140mm fan also looks good with the Cougar logo taking centre stage. The bad news is the fact that some of the cables are affixed permanently (captive) to the PSU while others are modular. Also the modular ones are flat, and although there’s seems to be good reason for flat cables (to aide in airflow) personally I’m not a fan. There’s also other oddities too, but I’ll cover those as we take a tour around the Cougar CMX 1000W PSU.
The top of the Power Supply is dominated by the large 140mm fan and its associated black shroud, with the Cougar logo in the middle adding an almost classy touch!
Flipping the PSU over allows us to see the specification label, see below right. Here you can also see what power draw can be placed on each rail (3.3v, 5.0v & 12.0v). The Cougar CMX 1000W appears to have six 12v rails with four rated at 24A and two rated at 28A (which is kind of odd!). But due to the Dynamic Multi-12v nature of the PSU power not used on other rails can be re-routed to where it’s needed, allowing the PSU to behave in similar way as a PSU with a single 12V rail.
|
|
Looking at the sides of the CMX 1000W we can once again see that lovely red/orange metallic paint, a smart Cougar logo can also be found on each side. The logos are opposite to one another allowing the logo to sit the right way up regardless of whether you mount the PSU fan facing up or down. This assumes of course that you wish to see the logo from the left side of the case, which tends to be the norm for most modern windowed cases.
|
|
Looking at the back of the PSU we can see the main power supply socket and a large power on/off switch.
At the front we can see the main power outputs and the captive cables (24-pin & 8-pin and x2 PCIE 6+2-pin power cables). The four black sockets are for peripherals and SATA power etc. While the four red ones (this is odd, read on to find out why!) are for powering up your Graphics Cards.
|
|
|
Looking at the big bundle of cables we can see that they’re all flat and covered with a pretty tough outer sleeving adorned with the Cougar name. Unfortunately you can also see that many of the cables are coloured, which can be frustrating if you’re looking for a real clean build, all black is definitely the way to go IMHO! The cables would also look better if the shrink-sleeve used at the end didn’t have any thing written on it…
The main captive (attached permanently to the PSU) 8-pin ATX power cable is a bit of a pig’s ear unfortunately. It’s ok up to the first 8-pin plug, but what’s all this extra cable for and these additional two plugs (x1 4+4-pin & x1 4-pin!?). I don’t want all of these dangling around in my case. This is one of the main reasons that I prefer fully modular Power Supplies. 😉
|
|
Looking at the other modular cables and looking first at the odd PCIE cable, odd why? Well on the PSU there’s four red outputs, yet when it comes to cabling there’s only one cable with a red plug!? The other modular PCIE cable (there’s only x2 modular) whilst looking the same doesn’t have a red plug it has a black one! AFAIK the red plug should be plugged into the red socket, but maybe I’m missing something, so where does the black one go!? 😉 Well it also goes into one of the red sockets, assuming you need to power up more than two Graphics Cards that is. Each PCIE cable is also of the split end variety, but ones is split with x2 8-pin plugs the other is split with x1 8-pin and x1 6pin!? I have no idea what Cougar were thinking, but these cable choices just don’t seem make sense. 🙁
Luckily the other cables fare better; there is one dedicated SATA cable with four plugs, one dedicated Molex cable with four plugs. A three plug SATA cable with a single Molex at the end (actually this makes sense and is useful!) and a three plug SATA cable with two Molex plus at the end. To top things off Cougar have also supplied a 4-pin floppy to Molex adapter.
All in all one of the strangest cable setups I have ever seen with a PSU and depending on your application, this may or may not bother you…
|
|
|
|
Cable Details
Hardware Installation
| Case | Cooler Master HAF XB | Power Supply |
Cougar CMX 1000W
|
| Motherboard | ASRock Fatal1ty Z97X Killer | CPU | Intel Core i5-4690K CPU |
| CPU Cooler | Raijintek Themis | RAM | Kingston HyperX Savage 8GB 2400MHz |
| Graphics Card | XFX AMD Radeon R9 290X DD Black Edition | SSD | HyperX FURY 120GB SSD |
Installing Power Supplies is usually a pretty straightforward affair, but this time around with the captive cables it makes life a little more difficult. The size of the Cougar CMX 1000W makes it a nice easy fit inside the Cooler Master HAF XB thanks to its regular size (L 180mm x W 150mm x H 86mm). It is still 20mm longer than our regular PSU, a Corsair AX760i.
For installation into the Cooler Master HAF XB there’s a PSU bracket that needs to be fitted first, handily this allows the PSU to hang out of the back of the case by a further 28mm.
|
|
Once in position you can see how tight the cabling is, but the second image shows that even with the cabling for twin drives and Crossfire 290X’s there is enough room… 😉
For powering up the twin XFX 290X’s I used the two captive PCIE cables from the Power Supply and used one of the PCIE leads from the modular cables (the one with the red plug on!). This meant using x2 round cables (from the PSU) and x1 flat cable from the modular cables, not the best example of design and attention to detail I feel…
|
|
Looking at the rest of the install we can see that the Cougar CMX 1000W has been mounted fan side down to take advantage of the Cooler Master HAF XB’s bottom fan filter.
|
|
|
|
I have to confess that I’m not a lover of flat cables even though I have to admit I had no installation related problems due to the flat cabling and at times it was even advantageous. The issue is that although you can lay them flat, you’ll want (need) to get all of the inherent twists out first, so for me what you gain in the flatness you lose in the annoyance of the cable’s twisting in a similar way to a car’s seatbelt. I guess it’s just a bit of a personal taste thing…
Testing Methodology/Setup
When it comes to testing Power Supplies there’s very little else you can do other than put the PSU under load and measure the voltages. As this is not a very real world test (as it only takes seconds to setup and record), we have employed a more real world test. For more details on our thoughts regarding Power supply testing check out this article.
The Power Supply is put under a real world load for 1 hour, while running both Unigine Heaven and running Prime 95 (Blend) simultaneously. Power Supplies over 750W are tested using x2 AMD Radeon 290Xs to ensure the PSU gets a real workout! 😉
Hardware Performance
As you can see from the image above the Cougar CMX 1000W Power Supply did well in our burn-in test, with all voltages (12v, 5v & 3.3V) remaining stable at (12.192, 5.136 & 3.408v). Although these voltages are a little on the high side (better high than low) they are well within the ATX guidelines that allow for a 5% fluctuation. Throughout testing and during the week long test period no signs of instability were encountered.
|
The maximum power draw (at the wall) during testing was recorded at 739.1 watts, suggesting that this Bronze Power Supply was delivering approximately 621 watts to the system due to its 84% efficiency at a 70% load.
For more information regarding Power supply testing and the 80 Plus Efficiency rating check out this article |
Final Thoughts
When it comes to performance the Cougar CMX 1000W
It’s not often we complain about packaging of products here at pcG, but this time I have to break that trend. Although there was no damage to any of the components, the packaging for the Cougar CMX 1000W was poor, with the PSU itself in just a bubble wrap bag and loose in the oversized box. I expected more for the asking price of this product and would not expect the PSU of all things to be free to move around inside the box, especially given its weight…
As I have already stated and you can see from the screenshot above, from a performance point of view the Cougar CMX 1000W performed flawlessly, with all of the main voltages (12, 5v & 3.3v) being extremely healthy, even during our one hour burn-in test. The voltages were a little on the high side though (although better high than low IMHO) but they are all still well within ATX guidelines.
The big issue that I encountered with the CMX 1000W Power Supply was its cabling, it’s probably best to check out the main review for all of the detail, but I will try and summarize here. First of all the CMX 1000W is a semi-modular PSU, while this is OK (ish) the choice of the cables permanently attached to the PSU is poor, as the 8-pin CPU power cable features multiple plugs (I only need one thanks!) that just clutters up your build. Also the two captive PCIE cables are round, but all other PCIE cables are flat!? The second modular PCIE cable also only features an 8-pin and 6-pin socket, meaning that you may run into issues if you want to use this cable and your GPU has x2 8-pin sockets (which is common). Other issues include the PSU having four red sockets, yet the cables only feature one red plug!? Finally there’s the use of coloured cables which can rather spoil a tidy themed build, best to use all black as far as we’re all concerned here at pcG.
As you can see the issues with cabling and the asking price (around £150 at the time of review) of the Cougar CMX 1000W lets down what is otherwise a really good looking, high performing Power Supply. With a handful of tweaks to the cabling and maybe some better packaging too, Cougar could take on some of the bigger Power Supply players like Corsair and Cooler Master…
Verdict
Please Share, Like & Comment below, we really value your thoughts and opinions…
|
Where possible we always use Amazon’s price for Value… |
Design/Quality |  |
 |
|
| Performance |  |
|||
| Value |  |
|||
| Overall | |
Many thanks to Cougar for providing this sample for review
