Cougar GX 700 W Power Supply Review

Power Distribution

In Figure 17, you can see the power supply label containing all the power specs.

Figure 17: Power supply label

The available rails are distributed like this:

• +12V1 (solid yellow wires): Main motherboard cable, SATA and peripheral power cables
• +12V2 (yellow/black wires): Half of the EPS12V connectors and an ATX12V connector
• +12V3 (yellow/blue wires): The other half of the EPS12V connectors, a six/eight-pin connector labeled “PCI-E2,” and two of the red connectors of the modular cabling system
• +12V4 (yellow/
  green wires): A six-pin connector labeled “PCI-E,” and two of the red connectors of the modular cabling system

The modular cabling system has the rails labeled – or sort of. While the black connectors (which are connected to the SATA and peripheral power plugs) are correctly identified as “+12V1,” two of the red connectors (for video card power cables) are labeled as “+12V5” (the correct label would be “+12V4”), and the other two are labeled as “+12V6” (the correct label would be “+12V3”).

This distribution separates the CPU (ATX12V/EPS12V connectors) from the video cards. When installing a second video card, make sure to connect one of the cables to the +12V4 rail (labeled “+12V5”) and the other cable to the +12V3 rail (labeled “+12V6”).

Now let’s see if this power supply can really deliver 700 W.