Conclusion

Those who are interested in pimping their gaming rig will gravitate towards the COUGAR PowerX 550W PSU's clean, elegant design. Its bright red and matte black colour scheme will suit case that are either black in colour or feature either yellow or red colour tones. Design is, after all, COUGAR's main priority when designing their products.

Aesthetics aside, the PowerX 550W PSU is a compact powerhouse with a clean, elegant design that delivers plenty of power for most desktop PCs, and more importantly - deliver a clean and steady flow of it.

Our tests have shown that the PowerX 550W can deliver very tight voltages, much tighter than required by the ATX12V specifications. Even when we increased the load, it didn't have any trouble handling it. It maintained its tight tolerances, no matter what we threw at it.

Do note too that we tested at a relatively high ambient temperature of 31.5 °C (88.7 °F). Of course, the COUGAR PowerX 550W has no trouble handling the higher ambient temperature because it's rated to run at up to 40 °C (104 °F) with no loss of power capacity. Only after 40 °C will it start losing 1% of maximum power output with every 1 °C increase in ambient temperature.

If you are a gamer, then the COUGAR PowerX 550W has more than enough juice to handle the typical gaming setup with a single high-powered graphics card. But if you require more juice, COUGAR has a more powerful model - the COUGAR PowerX 700W PSU which allows for SLI setups, thanks to the additional PCI Express power cables.

Do note though that the COUGAR PowerX 550W PSU only has six SATA power cables. That's plenty for most gamers but those who download a lot of media files and/or run RAID drives, the six SATA power cables may not be sufficient. Of course, that's easily amended by adding splitter cables. But if you opt for the 700W model, it comes with eight SATA power cables.

You should also take the 80 PLUS Bronze rating with a pinch of salt. COUGAR's own official power efficiency rating of "up to 87%" is a more reliable guide of the PowerX 550W PSU's power efficiency. That and its official power factor specification of "up to 99%".

Overall, the COUGAR PowerX 550W PSU has proven not only to look nice but to deliver actually good performance. We especially like how tight its tolerances are. This is definitely a power supply unit you should consider if you want reliable power in a good looking package.

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