Cougar DarkBlader X5 RGB Mid-Tower PC Case Review

Complete System

Despite being a mid-tower, this is a fairly big case on the interior. The very clean and simple layout on the interior means you’ve got room for a graphics card of up to 400mm in length, more than enough for anything on the market today!

Of course, I’ve put mine in vertical mounting mode, but purely for demonstration purposes, I don’t actually have a riser cable in there. It does look great though. However, keep in mind it’s a dual-slot design. Some GPUs are a lot thicker these days, and these may get a bit close to or even touch the glass, so stick to two slots for this mount.

It also looks like you’ll need to chose between this and SSDs here too, as the riser cable bracket will take up this space.

As for cooling, the front panel fans look absolutely stunning. Plus, you can really feel them pulling quite a lot of air from those front vents. It looked a little restrictive, but it certainly does feel it, and the fans are really quiet too, despite the case having such an open design at the top.

Of course, they’re addressable RGB, and while you can pair them to your motherboard, a simple tap of the button on the front panel changes the lighting effects/colours.

There’s a good number of cable routing holes too, so cables rarely have far to travel before they can be tucked out of sight.

Clearance for the cooler is excellent, and there aren’t many that won’t fit really.

While the case is clearly well set up for air cooling as standard, it does have impressive radiator support too.

You could easily put a 120mm AIO on the rear mount, but much larger models will benefit from the fantastic clearance at the top of the case.

With all the glass back in place, the whole thing is actually quite stealthy. The lighting isn’t so overpowered that it turns into a glitter ball, it’s quite tasteful actually.

Plus, the front panel isn’t solid black, but more a heavily smoked finish allows some of the fans light to glow through.

The stronger the colour, the easier it is to see, but overall, it’s subtle and I prefer that to something overly flashy.