Cougar PowerX 550 W Review

Name: Cougar PowerX 550 W
Brand: Cougar

crmaris

on Mar 25th, 2013,

in Power Supplies.

Manufacturer: Cougar

Performance Rating & Performance per Dollar »

Ripple Measurements

You will see the ripple levels that we measured on the main rails of the PowerX-550 in the following table. The limits are, according to the ATX specification, 120 mV (+12V) and 50 mV (5V, 3.3V, and 5VSB).

Ripple Measurements Cougar PowerX-550
Test	12 V	5 V	3.3 V	5VSB	Pass/Fail
20% Load	8.5 mV	11.4 mV	8.8 mV	11.6 mV	Pass
40% Load	11.6 mV	13.6 mV	9.4 mV	10.5 mV	Pass
50% Load	14.1 mV	14.8 mV	8.8 mV	12.7 mV	Pass
60% Load	16.3 mV	17.4 mV	8.8 mV	15.4 mV	Pass
80% Load	24.2 mV	19.4 mV	9.6 mV	18.1 mV	Pass
100% Load	32.3 mV	20.9 mV	9.9 mV	20.3 mV	Pass
110% Load	36.8 mV	22.0 mV	10.7 mV	21.0 mV	Pass
Crossload 1	16.5 mV	19.8 mV	11.5 mV	17.4 mV	Pass
Crossload 2	34.8 mV	19.1 mV	12.7 mV	13.2 mV	Pass

Ripple suppression is very good, which proves that HEC/Compucase finally managed to overcome problems they had with ripple control in the past—even their mainstream units are finally offering very clear DC outputs. High temperatures and generally stressful conditions failed to increase ripple to high levels, and they even remained low during the 110% load test, proving that filtering in the secondary side is superb. These Teapo caps apparently do a very good job, and the only question that arises here is for how long they will keep their good performance given capacitors age.

Ripple at Full Load

In the following oscilloscope screenshots, you can see the AC ripple and noise that the main rails registered (+12V, 5V, 3.3V, and 5VSB). The bigger the fluctuations on the oscilloscope's screen, the bigger the ripple/noise. For all measurements, we set 0.01 V/Div (each vertical division/box equals 0.01 V) as standard.