Introduction

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

Cougar is a German company that specializes in manufacturing PC cases, power supplies (PSUs), fans, and other minor accessories. Their PSU offerings easily stand out of the crowd because of their unique style and nice look. Cougar says the CMX series to belong to the high-end category; however, we think that it actually belongs to the mid-level category since these units are only 80 Plus Bronze certified and cannot compete with the high-end Platinum- and Gold-certified PSUs. But that is not necessarily a bad thing because Bronze units usually offer a higher price/performance ratio.

Today’s review will be of the fresh CMX 850 W V3 model promising up to 89% efficiency. The new models unfortunately only use normal double ball-bearing fans, contrary to the older CMX PSUs that used fans with Hydro Dynamic Bearings (HDB). Currently with the best bearing type, HDB fans have a higher lifetime, but are also much more expensive. Production cost restrictions apparently necessitated changing the fan. Our dB meter will clearly show how much the unit's output noise is affected by this choice. Cougar may have made the right choice because a Bronze unit's increased thermal dissipation requires a high speed fan, and the noise difference among various types of bearings is smaller at higher RPMs. In the end, the difference in noise probably didn't justify the large price difference between the HDB and double ball-bearing fan.

The CMX850 uses a semi-modular cabling design, has an amazing finish that many enthusiast users will appreciate, uses DC-DC converters for the generation of the minor rails, making it compatible with the new sleep states (C6, C7) Intel introduced with its Haswell processors, is equipped with two +12V rails, and uses a Japanese bulk capacitor, which will last longer than a Chinese one.

Specifications

This PSU is 80 Plus Bronze certified, features a semi-modular cabling design, and is Haswell ready, supporting those new sleep states Intel introduced with Haswell. The maximum operating temperature is restricted to 40°C, but we will test the Cougar CMX850 at an ambient of up to 45°C. Its protection features include all but the crucial OTP (Over Temperature Protection), which would have proven useful in a PSU that doesn't follow the ATX recommendation of operating at a maximum operating temperature of 50°C. The unit's dimensions are also quite large because it is 18 cm long, and its warranty is pretty short since the competition tends to provide five years.
The number of +12V rails is restricted to two, which, as you will see below, makes power distribution a challenging task. The minor rails are also too strong for a modern system—the 5VSB rail is quite strong and delivers 1.5 A more current than the typical 2.5 A of most typical PSUs nowadays.

Cables & Connectors, Power Distribution

The number of available EPS, PCIe, and SATA connectors is satisfactory given the category of this PSU, but there are only a few peripheral connectors—a couple more would be very welcome. All cables are long enough not to cause any problems in even large cases.

The distance among all connectors is good, but the peripheral connectors should ideally be separated by at least 15 cm since the components fed by these connectors are normally not close to one another (e.g. case fans). Finally, all connectors use standard-sized 18AWG wires.


Power distribution can't be described as optimal since the EPS connectors are fed by the same rail feeding the right modular PCIe sockets. You should probably connect at least one of the modular connectors to the red socket on the left of the modular panel if you want to use all four PCIe connectors, since there are only two modular and two native PCIe cables.

There are only two +12V rails, which is why the ATX, EPS, and peripheral connectors should be put on the first rail for optimal power distribution, with all the PCIe ones on the other. The EPS and PCIe connectors would then be fed by dedicated rails.

Packaging

The box is quite big and features nice graphics. At the front are an interesting shot of the unit and its model number. A badge near the bottom-left corner states that this unit is compatible with Intel's fresh Haswell CPUs, and the 80 Plus Bronze badge sits in the top-right corner of the front.


You will find a features description in one of the most popular languages, Spanish, on this side. For the record: Spanish is as popular as English!


Cougar speaks of extreme performance on this side. Well, we will see whether that statement holds true during our test sessions later on in our review.


The rear holds some pretty interesting information, including a brief features description in four languages, the power specifications, and a table depicting all available connectors of every CMX units. Two graphs also show the efficiency curve and this unit's fan speed throughout its entire load range. Cougar even speaks of Japanese capacitors on this side, but they don't specify whether this is in reference to the main APFC cap only or all caps of the secondary side—the latter are of greater importance since they suppress ripple and provide cleaner DC outputs.