Cougar MX500 ATX Mid-Tower Gaming Chassis Review

Interior

The interior has been given the same powder black paint job as the exterior and this gives a nice uniform look to the chassis. As you can see, the motherboard stand-offs are built-in, allowing for quick an easy motherboard installation, which a huge CPU cooler mounting cut-out and a few cable routing cut-outs should make installing the rest of your components a breeze.

There’s plenty of ventilation in the bottom for the PSU and dependant on the size of your PSU, you could also install a 120mm or 140mm fan or radiator in the base.

Up top there is room for 2 x 120mm / 2 x 240mm / 1 x 180mm / 1 x 200mm fans, certainly no shortage of choices. Unfortunately there doesn’t look to be enough clearance for a radiator here.

There is a high quality 120mm fan in the back which comes fitted with a standard 3-pin header. Below the fan there are seven expansion slots, each fitted with a ventilated cover and held in place with thumb screws for easy access.

Each of the 5.25″ drive bays is fitted with a simple to use quick-release mechanism, allowing for tool free installation and removal of your drives. Below that there are two hard drive bays, the top half holds 3 x 3.5″ and 2.5″ compatible trays, although the left wall of this bay can be moved over to make it native 2.5″ when combined with the three hard drive trays that were included in the box. The bottom hard drive bays features four more 3.5″ and 2.5″ compatible trays.

Each tray is made of plastic and features pegs to allow tool free installation of 3.5″ drives, but you will have to use the included screws to mount 2.5″ drives such as SSD’s.

Around the back there is plenty of room for cable routing, just a shame there are not more cable tie loops to help keep things neat and tidy.

Tidy or not, 20mm of clearance is a lot of space for a chassis of this size, so stuffing excess cables behind the motherboard shouldn’t be much of an issue.

In the front you’ll find the other pre-installed fan, a high quality 140mm fan with orange blades. There is room in the front panel for 2 x 120mm or 140mm fans.