Assembly

Installing the motherboard is done with the included screws, used to mount the board onto the little bumps on the tray. You may use a CPU cooler of up to 105 mm in height if you don't install a fan onto the side plate.


The next step should really be to install the PSU as it may not be possible to route all the cables once the graphics card is in place. If you use one with cable management, you should ensure that the connectors are added to the unit's total length since you are limited to 140 mm with a long GPU. Once you've added the power supply, you may also remove the rubber dust cover from the opening up top to drop the slimline drive in.


The GPU will fit right along the PSU's bottom edge (in our case a SFX-L unit, but you may use a normal ATX variant as well), and it may be of up to 350 mm in length, which is plenty for even the most powerful single GPU variants out there.


Installing drives is easily done outside of the compact chassis since they are mounted to the metal contraption Cougar supplies. You will use traditional screws to secure each drive in place. Alternatively, you could use the mounting position behind the motherboard tray for the 2.5" drive as well.


With everything installed, the front of the Cougar QBX is pretty full, while there is plenty of free room around the CPU. You could fit a larger CPU cooler, like a compact 92 mm tower, or plant a 120 mm fan/AIO liquid cooler onto the side frame.

Finished Looks

With everything installed and turned on, a fairly bright bluish/white LED turns on on the side, right above the I/O.


When looking at both sides, you can clearly see the insides of the system, which means that dust will have a fairly easy way in, so you may have to clean the chassis more often than if there were proper dust filters included.