Today we're going to be unboxing a case from Cougar. This is from their 6X
series. So it is the 6XR9 BB. It is a black case. Now we
unboxed a power supply from Cougar a little while back, but this is the first
case that we're going to be looking at from them. It is part of their gaming
series. And uh as I mentioned in the power supply unboxing, um even though
Cougar is a relatively new brand, you
have seen many products on the market in the case and power supply categories
from their parent company, which is HC, Compute Case. So they've been
manufacturing cases for a lot longer
than Cougar has been around. So, we're going to go ahead get this open and
hopefully I haven't broken anything yet. There we go. Okay, so it comes in a
plain brown box. You can see it is doublewalled for
protection. And it also has a pretty
good foam casing around it. So, you can
see it's about an inch and a half thick on all sides, which means that your
Cougar will arrive in 100% condition. I
mean, unless you're shipping from like Canada to Beckistan or, you know, if you
if you really if you really go really far out there, then uh yeah, you
probably won't have too much success. But, uh, yep. Let's go ahead and pull
off the scratch resistant cover. And then there we have
it. I, uh, I saw this case initially,
uh, around the time of, I believe, CES. So, it's been quite a while uh since
I've heard about it and since it's even been on the market and
uh leading up until the point where I've actually had a chance to have a look at
it. So, the first thing I'm doing here is I'm just removing the masking tape
and protective foam. So, they've gone ahead and they've put some some foam
pieces in between the front door and the front bezel of the case just to make
sure that it's not going to open and shut during transport and uh cause any
problems for you there. So, let's go ahead and get all that stuff removed.
All right. So, the front of the case is quite clean looking, actually. We've got
1 2 3 4 5 six 5 and 1/4 in drive bays,
which you can see can be easily removed with these uh latches right here. Uh
there are Oh, that's kind of interesting. So, for the top two,
they've gone ahead and removed the metal covers, but for the bottom ones, you'll
have to go ahead and remove those yourself. They fit back in just like
that. And then down at the bottom, you can see we've actually
got here we are a filtered cover for a
120 mm fan mount. So you can see there's mesh in the front then with a fan
filter. So you can easily take this out, pop it off, clean it out, and then
replace it. There we
are. The rest of the front of the case, you can see there's more mesh once you
close the front door. And this is actually quite nice. There's a bit of a
brushed finish to the metal here. And then you've got some chrome accents. And
so the front of the case looks very clean, very stylish. And then you have a
front lock so that you won't have people turning on your Oh, actually no. The
power and the reset are up at the top. So you won't have people opening up your
drives if you want to lock the front of it. So there's a couple scuffs on the
front, but those are actually okay. Those are they come off no problem.
There's some glossy stuff here that I hadn't seen before. And let's look at
what we got on the front. So, we have a power and reset switch, two USB 2.0
ports, front audio, as well as an ESATA port. So, we pretty much got all of the
essentials there. Then, moving along to the top of the case, we've got sort of
more more mesh, bit of an angled look to it overall. And on the side, this
actually kind of reminds me of the Cooler Master 830, the Stacker 830,
which is a bit of an older case, but it's
uh just reminiscent of that. So, it doesn't have a window, but the mesh side
panel is actually quite clear. You can see through it very easily. So, I'm
going to go ahead and sort of hold my hand behind it so you can see how clear
it is. So, if you do put some case lighting inside this thing, you're going
to have uh pretty good success seeing the components that you're trying to
light up. All right, here we have accessories that are included. We also
have internal cables and wiring. And let's just go ahead and sort of sort
this out before we try and get too much further into this. We can have a quick
look at the back of the case. Actually, pretty nondescript. Back here, we've got
120 mm or 140 mm fan mount. We've got a
space for the IO shield. We've got seven expansion ports as well as space for a
standard ATX power supply. The case keys
are fastened to the back of the case so that you will not lose
them. And inside, let's have a look at what we got. So, we have four spots for
uh 3 and 1/2 in drives. And then you can see there are also included mounting
points for 2 and 1/2 in SSDs. So, you can either use the toolf-free mounts
right here. And you can see these are quite flexible, but as soon as you put a
hard drive in it, those will stiffen right up and they'll hold themselves in
much better. I've seen mechanisms like this before. They are quite effective.
You can actually remove the whole 3 and 1/2 in hard drive cage if you want. And
uh I guess that would enable you to install longer graphics cards if you so
desired. Uh what I actually do in my own case is I have a 2 and 1/2 in drive. I
don't have any 3 and 1/2 in drives in my case anymore. And I have a two and a
half inch drive uh velcroed out of the way. And then I um I've completely
removed all the three and a half inch mounting bays in my case just for better
cooling, more openness, and for better overall air flow. So we've got an
included 120 mm fan in the front, although there is no included fan in the
back. So it looks like Compucase uh Cougar rather has opted to go for a
bottom front to top. There you see we
have what appears to be a 140 millimeter fan in the top. Uh airflow design so you
can add more fans. You're going to have your power supply running here. So most
modern power supplies have a 120 or 135
mm fan in the bottom. So you'll have air flow coming from the front of the case
going towards the back. So you can add a fan here as well and then exhausting
also out the top. Now, we've got toolfree mounting mechanisms in here for
the 5 and a/4 in base, which you will pull to unlock. And then, actually, let
me have a look at how this
works. Oh, okay. Actually, that's that's really straightforward. Then, all you do
Yeah. Oh, when you slide the drive in, it locks itself. That's neat. So, you
can see there's a tab on the back. Shoot. I'm not sure if you're going to be able to see that. Anyway, there's a
plastic tab on the back here. So, as soon as you slide the drive in, it'll
put the bolt into the side of the 5 and a/4 in drive. So, that's pretty neat.
And then, let me see if there's anything else I want to talk about really briefly
here. We've got PCI toolfree slot
retention mechanism. So, I guess we can try to find out how those work as
well. You might want to give me a minute with these ones. We figured it out.
There are instructions right here because apparently Cougar knows that
that's going to be difficult. So, all you do is you Whoops. Okay. Well, to put
it in, you just press on the top of the PCI slot and then slip it in under the
latch there. And then to pull it out, you do that. So, it's not that
complicated after all. Usually, I don't use these toolfree PCI mechanisms anyway
because whenever you have dual PCI slot cards, they're they usually don't work
anyhow. So, yeah, there's not that much benefit to it. Basically, the inside
lacks cable management a little bit, but I mean, you've
got a covered side panel, so it's not windowed, so as long as you've got
sleeved wires, things aren't going to stand out too much. And then you've also
got a pretty snazzy looking front bezel. So, overall, I'd say the appearance gets
a pretty good rating from myself. Here's
all the hardware that needs to be included for mounting your motherboard,
drives, and other things. And then last but not least, oh okay, they've actually
included a 5 and 1/4 in to 3 and 1/2 in
bay adapter. So just in case you still use a floppy drive or if you buy a 3 and
1/2 in card reader or anything like that, they've gone ahead and included
that. And uh hopefully that matches the
uh front style. No, not quite. That's all right. So then you can install a 3
and 1/2 in 3 and 1/4
in media card reader or anything else you require. Thank you for checking out
my unboxing and don't forget to subscribe
to Lionus Tech Tips.