Cougar Panzer Case Review

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Glass, Glass, Tempered Glass everywhere, all case manufactures are getting it to now but which does it best?  Well, it’s a hard one to gauge because everyone’s taste is different but they are for the most part sexy.  Cougar’s gotten into the game with their Panzer case and its nice, functional and its got the curves as well.  Today I bring you my review of the Cougar Panzer case, and yeah, it’s got tempered glass side panels.

Before we get checking out the case, let’s check out the features and specs:

  • Motherboard Support: CEB, ATX, Micro ATX, Mini ITX
  • Maximum GPU Length: 425mm (400mm with front fans)/ 16.73 inches/15.75 inches
  • Windowed Side Panel (Both sides are tempered glass)
  • 7 Expansion Slots
  • External Connections
    • 2 x USB 3.0
    • 2 x USB 2.0
    • 1 x 3.5mm Headphone Jack
    • 1 x 3.5mm Microphone Jack
  • Drive Bays:
    • 4+2 x 2.5in Hidden Bays (2 Behind motherboard tray, 2 on top of power supply cover and/or covered the 2 x 3.5in trays into 2.5in trays)
  • 2 x 3.5in Hidden Bays (Behind motherboard tray)
  • Fan Mount Locations and Sizes
    • Front: 2 x 140mm or 3 x 120mm (Not included)
    • Top: 2 x 140mm / 3 x 120mm (Not included)
    • Rear: 1 x 120mm Fan (Included)
  • Water Cooling Compatibility
    • Front: 360mm / 280mm / 240mm / 140mm / 120mm Radiator
    • Top: 360mm / 280mm / 240mm / 140mm / 120mm Radiator
    • Rear: 140mm Radiator
    • Bottom: 140mm Radiator
  • Max CPU Cooler Height: 160mm (6.30 inches)

Let’s get to the unboxing to see what’s inside:

Usually, I am not a fan of plastic on cases, but this works.  Let’s take a look at what comes inside the package aside from the case itself, afterwards we will take a close look at the case.

The case comes with this box filled with goodies, let’s break it down.

This is not a license plate frame with an awesome logo, this is actually a PSU bracket and I will show you how it works.

5 zip ties, not a ton but they may help keeping your cabling a little cleaner.

2 extra stand-offs, I actually use one of the 2 in this build, you will see it a little later.  The case does not bring a stand-off screw drive, I do recommend one.  Click here to find a toolkit that includes the bit.

24 fan screws, that gives you enough screws for 6 additional fans.

17 motherboard / HDD screws, a little problem here but you will see what I mean a little later in the review.

8 power supply screws.

24 SSD screws, so many here actually come in handy.

Finally, the package contains a guide

One side, the Assembly drawing goes over the name of each piece dissected.

The other side of the guide, goes over basic assembly instructions for liquid cooling on the top and front of the case, installing a hard drive, SSD, power supply, each piece of the accessory kit and each side of the case.

So, those are all of the pieces that come inside of the box aside from the case, a bit of a break down so that you know what you are getting.

Let’s check out the case now.

[nextpage title=”Case Layout and Details”]

Enough with teasing, I know, here is the case.

I will start with the front of the case and work my way around.

The top front of the case, looks very firm and strong with its edges rounded off, held together by alen wrenched screws to give it a bit of an industrial feel it it.  The front of the case, bares no openings for optical bays, but it does provide a honeycomb meshed design along the front and textured with indentations.  This has the potential for amazing cooling if and when you cover the front of this case with additional 140mm or 120mm fans.  You install up to 3 x 120 fans or 2 x 140mm fans, but it does not include any fans out of the box, they must be purchased separately.

Here are a few Cougar fan options, though of course you can use other types:

Orange LED CFD

Blue LED CFD

Green LED CFD

White LED CFD

Black Non-LED CFD

 

The bottom front, looks just like the top but has the golden Cougar logo, let’s take a closure look.  This front panel can be removed by pulling the front cover outwards on the bottom of the case.

Looking closer, it seems like it’s not a perfectly smoothed finish, but it’s still nice.

The side is almost entirely made up of tempered glass, but not totally.  The edges are the frame of the case, which actually aids in raising the case about half an inch off of the ground.  This helps the power supply pull uninterrupted cool air from the bottom and allows a liquid cooling unit towards the front of the case on the bottom.  Like the power supply, the liquid cooling unit has enough space to allow for cool air to be sucked in through the unit.

Each corner of the tempered glass comes tightened with a thumbscrew, that can also be removed with a Phillip’s head screw driver.

It is not a magic trick that all 4 thumbscrews are removed here and the side panel is still on.  The sticker on the top center of the side panel reveals the trick, let’s get a little closure to see what it says.

These instructions show you how to remove the side panel.  You remove each thumbscrew, then pull the glass out to a 45° angle, then pull it out.  I will go over this shortly.

Removing the screws on the side, the side panel will not fall off, the lip that ensure you remove the side panel at a 45° angle keeps the side panel in place.  I circled the removed thumb screw and the lip above.

Coming along to the back, we find a few other handy features.  Along the bottom of the case, we can see what looks a bit like a place to slip your hand to lift the case and it can be used that way but it also lends itself to an air intake for the power supply.

Coming up a bit, we find the entrance to the powersupply.  You would just slide the power supply into this grove then use the PSU bracket to screw into the case, then into the power supply but I will show you how this works in the build video coming up in the next page of the review.

Under the power supply, there are rubber feet to keep the grill from laying completely flat on the base of the case.

Here we see 7 expansion slots of PCI-E cards.  The slots are held in place by the slot side cover.  This not only allows you to screw in the PCI-E cards but also allows you to hold the slot in place against potential shipping damage.  More case manufacturers have been using these instead of internal covers as they aid better in shipping cases/computers with less potential damage should something occur in shipping when you are going to a LAN party or selling a PC with this case.

Coming up a bit more, we find the I/O shield slot and the 120mm fan.  This case only comes with a single fan on the rear of case which can also be used for a 120mm liquid cooling unit.

At the very top of the chassis, we find the plastic top and the “MADE IN CHINA” sticker.  The top can be pulled off by sliding your fingers in the separate of the plastic and the steel and while gripping onto the plastic, pull upwards.

The top, like the front of the case has the honeycomb mesh, but we can also find 2 x USB 2.0 and 2 x USB 3.0 ports as well as an audio and microphone 3.5mm jacks and their logo of course.  Behind the audio jacks, we find the reset and power button.

The 2 x USB 3.0 ports up close.

The microphone and headphone connections.

The 2 x USB 2.0 ports.

The buttons and nice large buttons that are easy to press, even the reset button is easy to push without having to use your pinky or a pen, you can easily push it with your index finger.  The placement though is a bit awkward because if you have the audio jacks plugged in as well as USB devices, can be challenging to press.

The spring-loaded power and reset buttons.  You will also notice that the power button is backlit as well.

Let’s take a look on the inside.

After removing the 4 thumbscrews and tilting the side panel at about 45° we open up the case.

At the bottom of the case, we find the 2 x 2.5 drive trays, and just behind them we can see 2 openings to fit the SATA power and data cables.  Such a simple little opening was actually missed from a previous case I reviewed.  These 2 little cut outs help cable a little better, though once the power supply was slid in, I was not able to use the one closest to the back of the case, but that’s OK.

Below the trays is the power supply cover and on the side of that cover in big orange text we can see the COUGAR logo.

Panning a little to the right, we can see the back side of the front of the case.  This has a removable magnetized grill so that you can easily remove the mesh, screw in some fans then place the grill back on, very little effort.

On the front of this case, you can apply up to 2 x 140mm fans or up to 3 x 120mm fans.  If you prefer using a liquid cooling unit instead of fans, you have a choice of installing a 360mm, 280mm, 240mm, 140mm or a 120mm liquid cooling unit.

Panning to the rear of the case we find the single 120mm fan included in the case.  You can also swap the fan out for a 120mm liquid cooling unit.  One other thing you will notice is that there is a big cutout on the back of the motherboard tray.  That is to help you install a liquid cooling unit or a heatsink that requires a plate to be mounted on the back of the motherboard.

Looking up, we find another magnetized grill, like the front can be removed to install some fans then place the grill back on, very little effort.

Also like the front, you can apply up to 2 x 140mm fans or up to 3 x 120mm fans.  If you prefer using liquid cooling instead of fans, you have a choice of installing a 360mm, 280mm, 240mm, 140mm or a 120mm liquid cooling unit.  I did run into a problem here, though it was more of an issue with my motherboard, but we will get into that on the build video.

In the center, just to the right of the motherboard, we find a slit in the case.  This is to allow for better cable management to string cables behind the case, then through the slit.  Because I do have an E-ATX board (the EVGA X99 Classified, which oddly enough is smaller than CEB standard, I did run into an issue that systems using an ATX board will not run into.  I will cover this a little later in the review.

Now we can see the flip side of the case without the side panel.

Starting off on the right, like we had on the other side of the case on top of the power supply cover, we have 2 x removable 2.5 drive trays.  You can install 2.5” SSD’s or mechanical drives.

On the left of the case, we have 2 x 3.5” drive trays that can double as 2 x 5” drive trays, so it is flexible.

The large strand of cables, has the following connections.

A USB 3.0 header connection, along with an HD Audio header connection and a USB 2.0 header connection.

Somewhat standard in all cases, you have the motherboard front panel headers.  Here we have the +/- Power LED, Power Switch, HDD LED and the Reset Switch.

The bottom of the case is actually raised a little higher than the panels let on.  This allows for even more air flow.  From the bottom of the case to the floor/desk it is 2 and a half inches raised.

The 4 feet on the bottom of this case are made out of rubber, to make sure this doesn’t slide around on your desk or on the floor… but why would you put this case on the floor?

Both filters are easily removable.

How easy is it to build a PC in this case?  In the next section I run you through a complete build so that you can plan a build inside of it.

[nextpage title=”How to build a PC inside of the Cougar Panzer”]

In this section, we go over building a full PC inside of the Cougar Panzer case.

Here is a list of the parts I used in this build:

In the first video, I show you all of the parts I will be using this build.  I show you here how to install the Intel Core i7 5930K processor, and then also have to install the Kingston HyperX Predator 3000Mhz RAM and the Arctic Liquid Freezer 240mm liquid cooling unit onto the EVGA X99 Classified motherboard.  Once all that is in, I show you how to install the motherboard I/O shield and how to install a needed motherboard stand-off onto the case.  Not all of the motherboards need to install and additional one, but this motherboard does, you may even need to remove one but I go through this in the video as well.

So far so good in the build.  Now we run into installing the board and more.

In that video, I show you how to align the board to the I/O shelf and how to screw in the motherboard to the stand-off’s.  The stand-offs are used so that the bottom of the motherboard does not touch the case, the board touching the case will result in your board getting shorted out or worse.  My particular motherboard is an E-ATX board, and if I used 3 or 4 video cards, I might have had to use the additional 6Pin PCI-E connection and I would have run into an issue since it is on the board at a 90°C.

In this video, I also show you that there is a potential issue if your board is an E-ATX board or CEB and the 24Pin power supply connection and/or SATA connections are at a 90° angle.  I was able to install the bottom 5 SATA connections, but if I had more drives,… I would have run into an issue.  I did have to bend the right side of the case a bit so that I could plug in my power supply in the ATX 24Pin connection.

I move on to install the liquid cooling unit’s radiator and its 4 fans onto the front of the case.  I had to install it onto the front of the case, rather than the top of the case due to the tall memory I was using bumps into the fans on the radiator.  If you have a lower profile liquid cooling unit or lower profile RAM, you will not run into this issue.  I finish off the video, removing the slot side cover.

Let’s move onto the final video on the build.

In that video, I show you how to install the EVGA GTX1070 FTW video card onto the motherboards x16 PCI-E slot, I also show you how to remove a video card just in case.  I also show you how to install the Plextor PCI-E SSD into the PCI-E slot.  After installing that, I show you how to install the SSD’s onto the Power supply cover, then afterwards how to install them discretely on the back of the case, SSD’s and mechanical drives.

Like most cases today, the power supply slides into the bottom of the case, but a little different than most.  When you install your power supply, you would slide it in, then hold it in place with the power supply bracket, rather than pushing into the case then sliding it back like most other cases.  Don’t worry, I show you in the video how that works.

That was the easy/quick part, building the PC, now one of the most time consuming parts is the cabling but I will show you how I did it as well.  Let’s move onto the cabling.

In that video, I showed you how to plug in the 24Pin ATX connection.  Remember I mentioned that I had to bend the case a little to get it to work on my particular board, if you have an ATX sized motherboard, chances are you will not run into this issue.  After that, I show you how to install the 2 x 8Pin CPU power, most boards only have either 1 x 8 Pin or 1 x 4Pin CPU power, but this motherboard has 2 for better overclocking providing more power to the CPU if needed.  A quick and easy one, I show you how to connect the rear 120mm fan onto a 4 Pin header on the motherboard then the fans for the liquid cooling units.

Then we get to my memory, I forgot to plug in the additional connections for my power supply, so I had to pull the power supply out and plug all the rest of the cables in that I would use.

I had to also flip over the 2nd mechanical hard drive, the bottom one so that the power cables could plug in easier.  On this power supply the power connections are a little too close, so I did this so that we can reduce the amount of cabling needed.  I ended up flipping the configuration of the SSD’s around a bit, I moved the Samsung SSD from the front of the case above the power supply to behind the case to make cabling easier as well.  Then we connect all of the motherboard headers as well, the reset button, power button, HDD and Power LED lights and the USB 2.0, USB 3.0 and Audio connections as well.  Now let’s jump to the 2nd video in the cabling series.

In this video, we finish off installing the USB 2.0 and Audio headers and we started connecting the SSD’s and HDD’s data cables to the motherboard and also the power connections to the drives as well.  After everything is connected, then we make it look nice by using some Zip ties.

The case has groves to allow you to zip tie the cables to the back of the case to make things look nicer when routing cables, I marked them in the picture above.  While cleaning up the cabling, I also routed the PCI-E cables to the video cards.

I went off of camera because of how long it can take, but here is the final product.

And here is how the case looks like on the back.

With all of these fans and hard drives, how loud is the Cougar Panzer?  I recorded video so that you can check it out.

Let’s bring it all together and see what my final thoughts are on this case, and I ask you to please chime in as well.

[nextpage title=”Final Thoughts and Conclusion”]

With all of the case manufactures out there, it’s hard to find a good case that offers lots of function options, not just a bunch of silly designs.  The case has the curves and the tempered glass to bring in the looks and seems very durable but it does have some issues.

Pros

  • Very affordable
  • Cable Management
  • Easy access to PCI-E retention card screws
  • No optical bay, smooth front
  • Glass front and sides
  • Includes 1 rear 120mm fan.
  • Up to 4 hidden Drives (4 x 2.5, or 2 x 3.5 and 2 x 2.5)
  • Allows for many fan or liquid cooling options

Cons

  • Potentially difficult motherboard placement, if your CEB/E-ATX board has 90 degree headers on the bottom and side of the board for 24Pin Power connector, SATA Ports or connections on the bottom of the board.
  • Power Supply Cover is not removable
  • Only includes 1 fan in the case, needs to include a few more though you can purchase and install more.

As nice as this case is, it has some issue depending on what sort of board you have but you can make it work.  The power supply cover is not removable, but in this particular build I thankfully did not have to hack the case apart to make something work, though I did have to bend it a slight bit.

Other cases have the side piece that blocks the SATA/Power connections spread a little further apart so that you can install everything easily.  As it is now, I cannot connect the other 5 x SATA ports without dremeling the case a little but since this will not affect every build, now you know what you have to work with.  If you have an ATX board you have nothing to worry about, but a CEB board can have some issues.

I really want to give it a 5 star rating because I do really like this case, it is built durable and has the makings to be a best case, but it does need a little more work.  For that, I will give this case a 4 Star rating, Recommended.

 

 

 

We are influencers and brand affiliates.  This post contains affiliate links, most which go to Amazon and are Geo-Affiliate links to nearest Amazon store.