Cougar Volant Case Review – Astounding Midi-Tower Chassis At A Modest Price

CHASSIS INTERIOR

The Volant interior is very spacious lengthwise, and will comfortably fit a variety of high-end gaming hardware, including up to 320mm graphics card(s). If you have an aftermarket CPU cooler, you might need to remove one of the side panel fans to allow for enough clearance for the protruding end; otherwise the case may not close which is quite unfortunate.

As a guide, our Cooler Master Hyper 212+ needed a fan removed from its dual-fan configuration to fit inside. The side-panel fan we installed for testing did not allow for enough clearance, so you Noctua NH-D14 users may be out of luck completely. For the size of the case though, it is an understandable trade-off. The only other con is it only comes with one rear exhaust fan, which usually isn’t that case as standard cases come with at least two. If you’re putting together a high end system we would recommend buying extra fans for consistent airflow, especially so if you live in a hot environment.

A – Top: 120mm fan x 2 (Optional)

B – Front: 120mm fan x 2 or 140mm fan x 1(Optional)

C – Bottom: 120mm fan x 1 (Optional)

D – Left side: 120mm fan x 2 (Optional)

E – Rear: 120mm fan x 1 (Included)

We covered the three external 5.25″ drive bays earlier, but the Volant also has room for six internal 3.5” HDDs (not forgetting the SATA dock on top). That’s a serious amount of potential storage in a midi-tower chassis, and very well thought out in terms of placement in such a small form-factor case. For these bays we have an always-appreciated screw-less mechanism which allows easy and painless installation.

Cable management is something the Volant does very well. You should have enough space to route your cables behind the motherboard tray for a clean and tidy appearance as there is a ton of clearance between the framework of the case and the side-panel grooves. There are cut-outs in the right places around the motherboard tray, and they are quite large. The motherboard cut-out itself is also massive, great for installing a low-profile aftermarket cooler, or water-cooling block.

Keep in mind though about what we said earlier. Any optional side-panel fan you install may have to be sacrificed in favour of clearing enough room for large aftermarket coolers, unless you prefer to leave your system open of course.