Introduction

We would like to thank Cougar for supplying the review sample.

For most of you the word "cougar" refers either to the animal or to an older woman who seeks sexual relations with much younger men. We are, thankfully, an IT site so neither of those definitions apply to today’s review sample by Cougar: a PSU, chassis, and cooling products company that has very close ties with HEC/Compucasem through their power products. In fact, this is the first Cougar unit that we test here on TPU, and we are really anxious to see how it will perform on our test bench.

The PowerX-550 will be the test subject of this review, and we are pretty sure most of you are keen to figure out how good (or bad) it actually is, since it plays ball in the mainstream category. But we'd better take things from the start: as you can figure from its model number, this PSU has a capacity of 550 W. Its other features include a non-modular cabling design, compact dimensions, two PCIe connectors and a nicely, at least for our taste, colored finish. The lack of modular cables will surely be a great turnoff to most users, but the first thing a company usually does away with if it wants to restrict production costs is the modular cabling design, since it apparently doesn't come cheap. We admit that we fancy modular cables, but if we had to choose between components of lower quality, especially capacitors, mosfets etc., we would also make do without the modular design to achieve a lower price. Even with native cables, the PSU will do its job just fine, although cable management will be much harder. Its performance would, on the other hand, suffer with lower quality components, especially in the long run.

Specifications

Efficiency is Bronze and we were unable to find any information on the operational temperature range of this unit. Cougar also claims that all popular protection features are supported, and we have no reason to disbelieve them. The unit has the standard length as prescribed by the ATX spec, which, although specified, is rarely met by contemporary PSUs, with 16 cm being the most common length. Such a small footprint will, without a doubt, be very convenient. Finally, the PowerX-550 is compatible with the previous ATX spec (v2.30) and the provided warranty does, for its price tag, look decent.


There are two +12V rails with unequal power distribution. The maximum current output of 5V looks, although the maxiumum combined power of the minor rails is normal for a contemporary PSU, kind of low compared to other units of similar capacity, but a 15A maximum is still enough for any system that a 550 W PSU can support. Finally, the 5VSB rail is a little stronger than the average.


Power distribution is good since the EPS connector is not mixed in with the PCIe ones, but we think the second +12V rail should also feed the ATX connector, or some of the peripheral ones, in order to take some of the burden off the 12V1 rail. The latter rail does have a higher OCP trigger point, which allows it to feed more connectors.

Cables & Connectors, Power Distribution

The number of connectors is good given the capacity of the unit and the power that the +12V rail can deliver. We would like to see another 4-pin Molex connector. As you can figure from the table above, the cables that hold the peripheral connectors include both types of connectors, with one of the three cables including another connector for the floppy. This may come handy in some instances, but it may also cause headaches during installation.

The general length of all cables is short, since this unit will most likely be installed into a small- or medium-sized chassis. We would, nonetheless, like the ATX- and PCIe cables to be at least 50-100 mm longer, but the distance among all connectors will, thankfully, suffice in most cases. Finally, all wires are of 18AWG size, which is the ATX spec standard for most connectors.

Packaging

The small box has a nice photo of the unit's orange finish on its front side. The model description is given in big fonts, and the capacity description can be found in the bottom-left corner—highlighted against a black background. The top-right corner has the badges for the three-year warranty and the Bronze efficiency rating. Cougar's logo resides in the opposite corner.


This side has a brief features description in Spanish—one of the most popular languages nowadays.


The most interesting view on this side depicts the badges that describe the unit's efficiency of up to 87% (most likely with 230VAC and not with 115VAC where efficiency is 1-1.5% lower at normal loads), its ErP Lot 6 2013 compliance, the APFC circuit, the OVP circuit of 5VSB, and its quiet operation (well, we will see about that during testing).


The rear side of the box has a multilingual features description in English, French, and German. There are also two tables describing the power characteristics and available connectors of PowerX-550 and PowerX-700 units. Near the bottom-right corner is a graph according to which the fan only outputs 30 dBA of noise close to full load, yet Cougar doesn't reveal any information on the conditions under which these difficult-to-achieve low noise-output measurement took place.