Conclusion

With the CM Power 700 Watt Cougar presents a solid power supply. 86 Percent efficiency at 50 Percent load is a good value and therefore also the thermal dissipation power shouldn't be too high. This also implicates a noise level which isn't too high. Always practical is a cable management and we value the number of integrated cables as a good compromise.

A cable management is always a good thing because of the simple reason that it allows the user to only connect the cables really needed to wire a system as neatly as possible. With six periperal and six SATA connectors it shouldn't be a problem to wire a recent gaming system. Also the fact that you can natively connect a two-way-SLI/Crossfire setup shows the CM Powers preferred application area. If one probably thinks about powering a file server with lots of disk there possibly won't be enough connectors for all your disk and you'll need adpators for the peripheral plugs or Y-cables reagarding the SATA connectors.

If we look at the performance values the Cougar CM Power 700 Watt shows good stability at 50 Percent load. If we look at the deviations under 100 percent load we determine that the voltage on the 12V rails drops by a bit more than two percent. Therefore the power supply also performs well under maximum load. You can also easily power a SLI/Crossfire rig. Regarding the 5 Volt and 3.3 Volt rails the deviations all were lower than +/- 5 percent. With 86 percent the Cougar CM Power 700 Watt also shows a good efficiency value at 50 percent load.

We can recommend the Cougar CM Power with 700 Watts to power a gaming system that doesn't have more than a two-way-SLI/CrossFire solution onboard. In this case also the efficiency is in a good range and all the voltages are very stable. You'll also be able to wire your rig neatly because of the well thought cable management.

The Cougar CM Power 700 Watt can be bought at Digitec to a price of CHF 193.- (est EUR 129.-).

Page 1 - Introduction	Page 5 - Performance 50 % load
Page 2 - Preview	Page 6 - Performance 100 % load
Page 3 - Delivery/Specs	Page 7 - Efficiency/Off-Power
Page 4 - Test setup	Page 8 - Conclusion

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Author: m.buechel@ocaholic.ch