Cougar CM 700 PSU no comments
Rating: 75
Price: $203 Contact: FortuneTec Phone: 02 9748 0001
Web: www.cougar-world.com
VERDICT: Enough PCI-E connectors to power four mid-range graphics cards is one reason why you pay more here.
The Cougar CM 700 looks expensive compared to other similarly-rated units given its $200 price tag, but it’s the one of the few models capable of natively running two high-performance graphics cards in SLI at this wattage or price. That’s through its two anchored and two modular PCI-E power adapters (four in all). In fact, there are almost enough anchored connectors here that you wouldn’t need to use the modular ones, except for SATA drives where you must use modular cables. The CM 700 was also the most efficient of the units we’ve tested recently at running our Crysis test, requiring 314.2W peak power. It also has quite good power factor ratings when our test system was either running Crysis or sitting on the Windows 7 desktop. If you need visual cues, this was the only PSU in this group to have a neon light in the power switch, which can be handy for diagnosing a problem system. There’s enough power here to handle a GeForce GTX 295, a Radeon HD 5800 card or even two Radeon HD 4870/4890 cards in CrossFire. There are other power supplies that will deliver more watts for your dollar but few had the Cougar’s build quality.
| Model | Cougar CM 700 |
| Price | $203 |
| Rated power output – continuous (Watts) | 700 |
| Rated power output – peak (Watts) | 700 |
| Cable attachment type – main power | Anchored |
| Cable attachment type – peripherals | Modular |
| Hard-wired power switch | Yes (neon) |
| POWER CONSUMPTION TESTS | |
| Windows 7 desktop (Watts/VA) | 129/142 |
| - Power factor | 0.908 |
| Dirt 2 @ 1,920 x 1,200 pixels (Peak watts/VA) | 314.2/331.7 |
| - Power factor | 0.947 |
| Standby power (Watts/VA) | 3.2/31.49 |
| - Power factor | 0.102 |
| “Off” setting (Watts/VA) | 2/31.1 |
| - Power factor | 0.064 |
| Tested on 3.4GHz AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition CPU with Nvidia GeForce GTX 295 graphics card, 4GB DDR2-1066 RAM. |