Cougar At CES 2017: New PSUs, Chassis, And Mice

By Aris Mpitziopoulos
published

Cougar is deeply enrolled into gaming products and also has a strong presence in the PSU market. During CES 2017 the company revealed some new PSU lines, the GTX, GX-S, and VTX.

The first two are 80 PLUS Gold certified with the GTX including fully-modular members, while all GX-S models use a non-modular cable design to be more affordable. Both lines include four members, with capacities ranging from 550W to 850W for the GTX line, while the GX-S models cover the 450W to 750W range. The VTX are 80 PLUS Bronze certified and the five models of this line cover the 400W to 700W capacity range.

In their suite Cougar had one of the GX-S models. This line will be released in Q1 2017, but pricing info has not been revealed.

The mid-tower Panzer is a military metallic style chassis featuring a tempered glass window on its side panel. It supports from mini ITX to ATX/CEB mainboards and it can accommodate up to three double slot VGAs, with 425mm length tops. This case can take up to six 2.5" SSDs or four 2.5" SSDs along with two 3.5" HDDs. It also supports up to eight fans and it can take four radiators on its front, top, rear, and bottom sides, with the radiator length reaching 360mm for the front and top sides. Finally, the dimensions are 208mm width, 565mm length, and 520mm depth. The mid-tower Panzer will be relased in Q1 2017 with a price close to $130.

One more product that we noticed in Cougar's suite is the Minos X3 mouse, which uses a good optical sensor (PMW3310DH) with up to 3200DPI resolution. According to Cougar, this mouse is suitable for professional FPS/MOBA/RTS players who focus on games that don't need high DPI mice. The Minos X3 costs $40 and promises zero acceleration and true 1:1 tracking. It utilizes OMRON switches for increased reliability and its DPI and polling rate settings can be adjusted through a couple of switches located on its bottom side.

Aris Mpitziopoulos
Aris Mpitziopoulos
Contributing Editor

Aris Mpitziopoulos is a Contributing Editor at Tom's Hardware US, covering PSUs.

4 Comments Comment from the forums
  • thundervore
    Please tell me that I did not see an Asetek rebranded Cougar cooler in that case and someone just placed a Cougar case badge on an Asetek cooler.

    I started loosing faith in Cougar after they started doing gaming chairs but rebranded Asetek AIO units is where I would draw the line.
    Reply
  • wifiburger
    well that's a stupid mouse, you need to flip it for those changes ? I have a Logitech G9x I can change DPI with buttons, also mouse profiles with buttons,
    Reply
  • Jake Hall
    19117578 said:
    Please tell me that I did not see an Asetek rebranded Cougar cooler in that case and someone just placed a Cougar case badge on an Asetek cooler.

    I started loosing faith in Cougar after they started doing gaming chairs but rebranded Asetek AIO units is where I would draw the line.

    Why don't you like Asetek?
    I own a couple Cougar case fans and I really like them
    Reply
  • thundervore
    19132886 said:
    19117578 said:
    Please tell me that I did not see an Asetek rebranded Cougar cooler in that case and someone just placed a Cougar case badge on an Asetek cooler.

    I started loosing faith in Cougar after they started doing gaming chairs but rebranded Asetek AIO units is where I would draw the line.

    Why don't you like Asetek?
    I own a couple Cougar case fans and I really like them

    Asetek started to become a company I disliked since they started to innovate less and stifle innovation. From suing every company out there for making their own water cooling units like Swiftech and Coolermaster to discontinuing great coolers like the Asetek 760GC. Not the mention almost every AIO out here is just another rebeanded Asetek unit that all the OEM does is change the fans and the price.
    Thermaltake Antec Zalman Intel Corsair
    Asetek had something great, such as the 760GC. All they had to do was increase the size of the radiator to a 240 or a 280 but instead the swept it under the run and force users to buy 2 separate units to accomplish the same thing 1 unit could have by just improving the cold plate technology and radiator size.


    As for Cougar, I brought 4 COUGAR CF-V12HPB Vortex about 5 year back, and they were great!! It wasn't until about a year later when I switched motherboards and connected them I realized as soon as I plugged them in to a PWM header they started clicking and grinding. I understood if it was 1 out of the 4 fans but not all 4. Cougar admitted the had an issue with the PWM circuit and they had to replace the fans with a fixed version so I RMAed them trough Cougar in which I had to pay shipping and the replacement fans did the same thing. It was then I noticed on the old board I ran them on 3pin fan headers and there was no noise. So I switched the headers on the new board to DC and no noise, switched them to PWM and the noise came back. So the fans were great, I just couldn't run them via PWM which defeated the purpose of paying $16 per fan for PWM.

    I still use all 4 COUGAR CF-V12HPB Vortex to this day via DC along with 3 COUGAR CF-V14HB which are only 3pin. But after this fan experience I said I would not touch another Cougar product even though they were putting out some great looking cases over the years, but now it just seems they are just copying the competition with RGB everywhere when they started with LED fans now its mice and keyboards and gaming chairs so they do not know what direction they want to go.
    Reply