Cougar QBX Mini-ITX Gaming Chassis Review

Final Thoughts

Pricing

The Cougar QBX is extremely affordable and can be picked up from most major computer retailers for under £40! I managed to find a good price at CCL for just £34.99, but be advised that I have seen a few retailers listing it as high as £60, so be sure to do your research. This is a very impressive price overall and if I had to guess, I would have thought this chassis was more valuable.

Overview

The Cougar QBX isn’t the most practical chassis in the world, for those building their first system, they may find this a little tricky to work with. Cable routing needs a bit of care, you need to make sure you purchase a compatible power supply, then also take into consideration if your chosen PSU will limit your GPU length. So yes, a little extra thought needs to go into your part picking process, but this much is true with most builds, especially so with smaller chassis.

The QBX isn’t the smallest chassis in its class, nor is it the most capable, but when you look at the specification vs price, you’re going to have a hard time getting anything better. I even think you’ll struggle to find a small chassis for this price that looks as good as the QBX, as it’s certainly a pretty looking case.

Airflow on this chassis is very good, so those wanting to put a powerful graphics card inside it shouldn’t have anything to worry about. Acoustic performance is obviously something to consider, but given that many modern graphics cards run passively when not under high load and modern CPU coolers and processors are fairly efficient, it shouldn’t be tricky to combat the issue.

Build quality is perfectly reasonable too, on par or above the average for something in this price range and form factor, so overall, this is a rather great chassis for a very competitive price.

Pros

• Good build quality
• Nice aesthetics
• Lots of airflow
• Dust filters
• Fits an ATX PSU
• Room for long graphics card
• Slim ODD slot

Cons

• Little protection again noise
• PSU compatibility issues with some 3-pin connector types
• Tricky cable routing

“The Cougar QBX is a great little case and would make a nice looking addition to anyone’s desktop, home AV or LAN gaming setup. It’s not perfect, but at this price with such a smart looking design, you’re going to be hard pushed to find a better deal.”

Thank you Cougar for providing us with this sample.