Cougar QBX Ultra Compact Gaming Case Mini-ITX

Product Information

Noise is measured 0.5m from the case's front corner, on the side that opens. The numbers are corrected to the 1m industry standard by subtracting 6 decibels, which is used by many loudspeaker and fan manufacturers. Test Results

The only way to get decent cable management with a custom build is to use a modular PSU, and a high end case like Lian-Li, Silverstone and Corsair Installing the motherboard is the easiest part, though take our advice and plug in the front-panel case connectors and any other cabling (SATA, for instance) that would go into the right side of the board before dropping in a power supply. Why? The motherboard sits nearly flush against the PSU, and it can be challenging trying to negotiate wires into position at that point… The interior of the QBX deceptively looks very spacious because of the case's length. Only the left half of the main tray is reserved for the motherboard. A large opening allows for the installation of coolers without having to remove the motherboard from the case. The large opening extends beyond the top end of the motherboard for the routing of cables. Smaller openings also exist to the right and bottom of the motherboard area for the same purpose, none of which is covered with a rubber grommet. The right half is almost entirely taken by the PSU, with a narrow strip reserved for the slim ODD drive. A full-length (350mm, to be precise) graphics card fits along the bottom of the case. In the foreground, you can see the detached panel that includes a 3.5-inch hard drive cage and slots for two SSDs. There’s also space for a single 120mm fan (or radiator+fan for liquid cooling) to be mounted here. Removing the panel is stupid easy: it slides in and out of the slots at the top of the case, so you can also flip it up for easy access to the guts without completely removing it.

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However, this might not work if you're installing an optical drive, which is a bummer because as it turns out, finding the right size PSU with a compatible plug orientation isn't easy, especially if you rule out generic (read: low-quality) units. Removing the side panels of the Cougar QBX is a simple matter of undoing four thumbscrews. However, the top panel also needs to be removed for the installation of the PSU and that requires the use of a typical Philips PH2 screwdriver. For small upgrades and tweaks, removing the top panel should not be necessary. It's a welcome trade-off, considering Cougar includes only a single fan: a 92mm rear exhaust, visible here...

I avoid Fractal and NZXT like the plague. They are really just crappy quality. They completely ignore obvious design choices in every model...there's always one thing that utterly ruins the case, requiring some extreme modding and wasted time to work around. Although the Cougar QBX can take a full size ATX PSU, there is a catch – only PSUs up to 140 mm long will fit and they need to have their AC cable receptacle oriented in a particular way. According to the company's documentation (below), PSUs with the receptacle facing upwards are not compatible with the QBX. SFF cases are inherently at a disadvantage when it comes to cooling. To account for that, both side panels on the QBX sport large cutouts, but instead of side windows, each panel sports a large mesh grille… This holds a drive cage that can fit a single 3.5-inch hard drive and two 2.5-inch solid-state drives (SSDs) or hard drives at the same time, as well as a 120mm liquid cooler, all suspended in air. It flips upward, and is fully removable. Here it is with a couple of SSDs attached… With that massive dual chip GPU it leaves little room for cable management, there are more appropriate GPU's for iTX cases that are noticeably shorter.While the QBX only plays nice with mini-ITX motherboards, it's willing to mingle with some standard-size components. In fact, you can shove an elongated graphics card up to 13.7 inches long inside the QBX. As a point of reference, Nvidia's super-beefy GeForce GTX Titan X is 10.5 inches long, so even with a top-of-the-line card, there's room to spare. If you find that you need more cooling, you can install an 80mm fan in the front, two 120mm fans on the top and bottom, and a 120mm fan or liquid-cooling system on the left side. Interestingly enough, despite having only a single case fan and not much else in the cooling department, the T60-SFX runs significantly cooler than the Cougar QBX when it comes to the GPU temperature. This is probably due to the location of the case's air intakes that serve more or less as a funnel, running all of the ambient air past the graphics card before it's brought up to the CPU. Overall, even the CPU runs a few degrees cooler in this case, which is somewhat surprising given its design.

You can also fit water-cooling solutions, a standard ATX power supply, and an optical disc drive inside the QBX, though as we'll discuss a bit later, there are caveats to certain component selections due to the size of the case. None of them is a deal killer, though they are reminders that there are inevitable trade-offs when building inside a case this small.

Packaging & Bundle

I went hunting around the office, and between the component supplies of PC Gamer and Maximum PC, found three more standard ATX power supplies that were all 160mm long. Finally, we found one that fit: a 140mm Rosewill Valens 500.

The QBX splayed open. A mini-ITX motherboard fits into the top-left corner, while the top-right holds the power supply. Zoom in on the picture and you can see circular half-globes rising out of the metal. That’s for the motherboard. It’s pre-risen!From top to bottom, there's a power button with an integrated LED, a drive-activity LED, two blue color-coded USB 3.0 ports, and separate headphone and microphone inputs. When I first tried to insert the MSI GTX 960, it was bumping up against the cables and wouldn’t align with the slot properly. So I unplugged the power cables and put the card in. It fit perfectly, with plenty of room to spare, length-wise. But there was a very, very small gap between card and power supply. Last but not least, all this power needs to be well cooled or all those components in a small space would simply burn themselves. QBX solves this problem with what is the best cooling on the market for a case of its class. Up to 7 fans with possibility of installing water cooling (up to 240mm long) will provide all the required airflow, including a dedicated independent PSU airflow that prevents the air from that particularly hot part of the computer to get to the rest of the components. The QBX's pro-cooling design guarantees that this airflow gets to the right places through the right ways, optimizing cooling even further.