As every year, COUGAR, leading German PC case and power supply brand, will be showing a strong presence at the Computex 2012 Tech Fair in Taipei, Taiwan. At booth J0409a, Floor 1 in the Nangang Exhibition Hall from June 5 through June 9, COUGAR will be challenging serious gamers with their latest high-end PC equipment line-up. Prominently on the floor ground will be the long-awaited Challenger ultimate gaming case, the most power efficient 80 Plus Platinum certified PC power supply Platinum PTX, as well as the patented and award-winning Vortex series of PC case fans.

COUGAR, leading German PC case and power supply brand, just introduced the latest addition to their line-up of high-end mid-tower PC cases. The COUGAR Volant with its optimized ventilation, by offering enough room for 8 installable fans, is particularly targeting demanding gamers and enthusiasts. To further improve ventilation and in-case airflow, the COUGAR Volant also sports an advanced cable-management keeping the inside clean and neat. Two holes in the backside of the chassis provide access for water cooling solutions.

The combination of rugged lines, metal mesh elements and glossy surface ornaments lend the all-black COUGAR Volant mid-tower its unique gaming personality. A total of 7 PCIe slots allow for multiple-graphics setups in SLI and CrossfireX modes with state-of-the-art graphics cards of up to 320 mm/12.5" length. Drive installation is child's play with the Volant due to COUGAR's screwless design technology. Easy and convenient on-the-fly data access of 3.5" and 2.5" HDDs/SSDs is provided for by an integrated docking-station on top of the case.

German feline-loving firm Cougar has now rolled out two more Evolution Series full tower PC cases, the Evolution BO (which we mentioned back in January) and the Evolution Galaxy. These models feature similar specs but come with their own color theme - black and orange for the EBO and black and white for the EG.

Seen below, Cougar's cases measure 223 (W) x 523 (D) x 514 (H) mm, and have a steel 'skeleton', an I/O panel with two USB 2.0 and two USB 3.0 ports, a top-mounted 3.5-inch/2.5-inch SATA drive dock, a built-in fan controller, six external 5.25-inch bays (with tool-free mounting systems), four internal 3.5-inch trays, and eight PCI slots. The Evolution BO also packs a 120 mm Vortex HDB rear fan.

Both the Evolution BO and Evolution Galaxy have a recommended price tag of $94.99.

COUGAR, leading German brand of power supplies and PC accessories, have launched their new high-end series of power supplies specifically targeting demanding gamers, the COUGAR GX V2 series. The 80Plus Gold certified GX V2 series comes as 600 W/700 W/800 W/900 W/1050 W versions and provides up to 93% peak efficiency. This is the highest efficiency standard possible in the industry at the moment.

One major upgrade in this revision is COUGAR's patented VORTEX fan, which in the GX PSUs series comes in a 140 mm series hydro-dynamic bearing, which not only dramatically improves lifetime but also reduces potential noise to a minimum. Also internal electric filtering has been further improved to lower ripple and increase efficiency.

Intel "Lynx Point" 8-series chipset, which will form the foundation of 4th Generation Core processors in the LGA1150 package, codenamed "Haswell", was detailed in a leaked company slide. A slightly older report this week focused on Haswell chips having DirectX 11.1 graphics, and a reorganized display output logic that sees digital display outputs being wired to the processor package, while analog display outputs being routed to the chipset. This chipset talks to the processor's embedded graphics controller over a slightly less functional Flexible Display Interface (FDI).

Lynx Point chipset is a platform controller hub (PCH), much like all the Intel client-platform chipsets released since P55. A crude way to define its function would be to call it a "glorified southbridge", which handles all the connectivity of the system, while lacking the main PCI-Express root complex of the system to which graphics cards are ideally connected, as that's relocated to the CPU package. The PCH does have a narrower 8-lane PCIe hub, but to wire out x1 and x4 expansion slots, and onboard controllers. The Lynx Point chipset connects to the processor primarily over DMI, although the slide doesn't detail the DMI bandwidth. Most likely, it's similar to Cougar Point's 4 GB/s. Lynx Point also lacks a supplementary 4 GB/s PCIe link from the processor that's found on X79 chipset.

Announced one month ago, the Solution PC chassis made by Cougar is set to become available in European stores next week. Pictured below, this case measures 198 (W) x 425 (H) x 484 (D) mm, and features an all-black paint job, a front I/O panel with USB 2.0 (x 1) and USB 3.0 (x 1) ports, three exposed 5.25-inch bays and six internal 3.5-inch bays (all with tool-free mounting systems), two pre-drilled holes for watercooling tubing and a single 120 mm fan (found at the rear).

Cougar's Solution will cost 55 Euro.

For next month German company Compucase has planned the European release of another Cougar-branded PC chassis, the Evolution BO. This 'Super Midi-Tower' is a variation of the already-available Evolution model and features a black/orange color scheme, a steel structure, support for micro ATX and ATX motherboards, and a top-mounted 3.5-inch/2.5-inch SATA drive dock.

The Evolution BO measures 223 (W) x 523 (D) x 514 (H) mm, and has an I/O panel with two USB 2.0 and two USB 3.0 ports, a built-in fan controller, six external 5.25-inch bays (with tool-free mounting systems), four internal 3.5-inch trays, eight PCI slots, one 120 mm Vortex HDB fan installed at the rear (up to six more fans can be installed), and two pre-drilled holes for watercooling tubing (found at the back).

According to its maker, the Evolution BO will hit stores priced at 99 Euro.

COUGAR today announced global availability of their latest middle tower PC case focusing on attractive design and convenient every-day usage features at an affordable budget price point. The COUGAR Solution comes entirely black coated outside and inside, the honey-comb and mesh hybrid intake design creates a solid, rugged look with optimized ventilation characteristics.

As COUGAR is specifically targeting demanding enthusiast users and gamers, powerful high-end setups are always a major focus of attention when designing PC cases, power supplies or cooling fan solutions. Therefore, the COUGAR Solution offers a broad range of ventilation upgrade potential with up to 8 installable fans. But ventilation is more than just about fans. In order to optimize internal airflow, the COUGAR Solution has been created with a sophisticated, yet easy to use cable-routing in mind. The cable routing does not only ensure a clean inside of your system, but moreover allows your components to stay cool. In turn this also ensures a longer product life span.

COUGAR, exclusive brand for high-end quality PC cases, power supplies and cooling fans, has been renown among demanding gamers for some time already. But until 2011 COUGAR had only been available in few countries. Now, COUGAR has announced that their global expansion with newly founded branch offices in all major territories around the world has been successfully initiated in 2011, effectively catering to gamers' needs everywhere.

The award winning PC cases, power supplies and cooling fans are not only being appreciated by users, but also won accolades from virtually all major computer magazines and review sites, as well as being awarded design and innovation awards such as the Computex 2010 Award. For 2012, COUGAR is already nominee for the highly acclaimed industry design award Designpreis Deutschland 2012. All this demonstrates, that user orientation and listening to the needs from the enthusiast and gaming community is still a major driver of the entire IT industry and for COUGAR in particular.

COUGAR revised the award-winning 80PLUS Gold certified GX-series Power Supply. The fan used previously was replaced by a proprietary development of COUGAR. From now on, one 140 mm fan COUGAR VORTEX HDB is used. The fans of the VORTEX HDB series have a much longer lifetime (300,000 hours MTBF) and are still much quieter. Bearing noise is through the hydro-dynamic bearings almost impossible.

We have responded. In response to a lot of customer feedback, now modular flat cables are used to achieve a perfect airflow and provide a simpler interface cable assembly. The internal filtering has been optimized for better ripple noise levels and a further increase in efficiency achieved. Special attention was paid to the design of the power supply housing. This is enhanced by the redesigned golden fan grill and the fan comes with its patented VORTEX fan blade design very nicely. The new photo-realistic packaging gives the impression that you had the power supply before opening in your hands.

PC cooling and power-supply specialist Cougar started selling Vortex series of performance PC fans in the UK. Cougar's new fans include the high-end Vortex PWM, followed by Vortex HDB, and Vortex (standard). Vortex PWM and Vortex HDB feature hydro-dynamic bearing, the Vortex HDB lacks PWM-based speed control. The standard Vortex fans feature hyper-spin bearing. Vortex PWM is currently only available in 120 mm size, while the Vortex HDB and standard Vortex are available in 120 mm and 140 mm sizes.

All five fans feature speeds in the higher-end of the spectrum of typical fan speeds. The Vortex PWM 120 mm features a PWM-controlled speed range of 800~1500 RPM, Vortex HDB models spin at 1200 RPM, and so does Vortex standard 120 mm. It's just the Vortex standard 140 mm that spins a little lower, at 1000 RPM. But no gripe there. Going by Cougar's ratings, any of these five fans will give you airflow in excess of 100 m³/h, and stay under 20 dBA in noise output. All five models look the same, with their rounded-rectangular frames with rubber padding, and orange-colored impellers, keeping up with Cougar's signature colour scheme.A specifications table follows.

If 80 Plus Gold was the order of the best PSUs shown at Computex 2010, this year, the trend is with even higher efficiency ratings, such as 80 Plus Platinum. For any PSU to be certified 80 Plus, it has to go though independent testing, a bad thing if you're rushing in new products. At the same time, having buyers discover that your 80 Plus certifications are fake would be a disaster for your brand. To tide over this dilemma, PSU major Cougar came out with an efficiency rating badge of its own for use on new models, 92% Platinum, denoting that the PSU offers efficiency on-par/close to 80 Plus Platinum. It's probable that these PSUs will get the actual 80 Plus Platinum rating later. Up on display at Cougar's booth were beautiful-looking Cougar PTX 500W and Cougar GX 500W two semi-modular high-efficiency boxes.

With escalating raw-material and labor costs, motherboard manufacturers had decided to hike prices in Q1 2011. To its effect, leading companies ASUS and Gigabyte have already implemented price-hikes in February, which will reflect in store prices soon. MSI will be introducing price-hikes on its motherboards by 5%-10%. Motherboard sales are expected to go up shortly, as the industry is re-releasing socket LGA1155 motherboards with rectified Intel "Cougar Point" 6-series PCH chips.

HEC/Compucase brand Cougar's showcase for CeBIT 2011 will include two premium products, the Cougar Platinum series 80 Plus Platinum compliant PSUs, and Cougar Evolution ATX Mid-Tower case. The sporty-looking Cougar Platinuim can deliver at least 90% efficiency on all loads. The first model in the series delivers 700W of continuous power, and probably features modular cabling. The Cougar Evolution is an all-black mid-tower featuring numerous gamer-friendly features. It includes USB 3.0 front-panel ports, a vast drive rack featuring six 5.25" bays, and a side-window. Not much more is known about these two products, but are worth looking out for at CeBIT.

FSP Group, a channel brand distributor of reputed PC and server power supply manufacturer Fortron, unveiled its latest line of high-efficiency PSUs for PC enthusiasts. Named FSP Aurum (Latin for Gold), the PSUs are 80Plus Gold certified, with over 90 percent efficiency at all times. The first wave of Aurum series will consist of 400W, 500W, 600W, and 700W models. The PSUs use granite-touch casing which is starting to get common with high-end PSUs from manufacturers such as Enermax, Cougar, Cooler Master, etc.

The 400W and 500W models feature a double "Hybrid Synergy" 12V rail design, while the 600W and 700W ones feature a quad-rail design. A "Multiple Intelligence Ability" (MIA) chip keeps control over various performance and protection functions. The PSUs use high-grade Japanese capacitors to contribute to the efficiency. The PSUs are ATX12V v2.3 & EPS12V v2.92 compliant. A 120 mm fluid dynamic bearing fan keeps the units cool. The PSUs will be backed by a 5-year warranty. The FSP Aurum series will be officially released at the upcoming CeBIT event in early March.

Eurocom, the worlds leading notebook developer is adding AMD's new high performance HD6970M GPUs to their extensive options of high end video cards. With the HD6970M Eurocom is extending their already impressive options of configurability in their line of products. The Radeon HD6970M is AMD's top of the line VGA card of their new 6xxxM series that they will oficially launch at the Computer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada starting on 6th of January 2011. The addition of the AMD 6000M series cards in single and crossfire combined with NVIDIA's GTX 400M series and FX 5000M series cards in single and SLI gives Eurocom customers a complete choice of video processor options to fit any project.

HEC subsidiary Cougar Power is unveiled its newest lineup of high-end power supply units (PSUs), the Cougar Power S-Series. These PSUs come with three big selling points: modular cabling, 80Plus Silver efficiency rating, and eye-catching aesthetics. Part of the series for now, are the S550 and S700, with output powers of 550W and 700W as their names suggest.

The PSU comes with a rugged casing with three-tone colours (graphite, silver, and orange). Under the hood is a 100% Japanese 105 °C capacitor design. DC-DC switching ensures high efficiency. The +12V circuit uses four rails. Packed with with undervoltage, overvoltage, overload protection, these PSUs bag 80Plus Silver efficiency rating. These are expected to hit stores on September 1.