Cougar Gaming's Cratus Open Air Case For Massive PC Builds Should Come With A Spoiler Alert
When it comes to bucking traditional case design, Cougar has been known to don its honey badger hat and release some pretty wild concepts, criticisms be damned. The result is often a truly distinct enclosure that people are apt to either really love or loathe. Case in point is the new Cougar Gaming Cratus, an open-air chassis with a spolier rocking a "straight flash beam to present a unique lighting atmosphere."
There's a lot going on here. If you're a fan of spoilers, RGB lighting, angled cases, open-air frames, and funky aesthetics, then this could be your dream chassis. On the flip side, any of those traits are potential deal killers, depending on who it is doing the judging (and buying).
"Shaped like an inward-curved roll cage, the case features a steel frame to which several key case surfaces are hung, including two tinted tempered-glass panels. The motherboard tray is angled such that its rear points upward, which should favor most air- or passively-cooled components," Cougar explains.
Physical appearance aside, you can build a monster PC inside this case. The angled motherboard tray supports large-size Extended ATX (E-ATX) mobos, and for graphics, there's enough room to stuff a GPU measuring 460mm (18.11 inches) long if you forego any fans or a radiator next to the motherboard, or up to 325mm (12.79 inches) if filling up that section with fans or an AIO cooler. For reference, NVIDIA's newly minted GeForce RTX 4090 FE measures 336mm (13.23 inches) long.
For storage, the backside of the motherboard tray provides living quarters for three 2.5-inch SSDs and two 3.5-inch HDDs. And, of course, practically every motherboard these days comes with at least one M.2 slot. To keep things looking tidy, there's a hinged cover that sits atop the 3.5-inch bays, which is also handy for routing cables.
By design, an open-air frame facilitates a level of natural cooling, though that alone usually isn't enough if the air is not moving—at least for higher end builds. In this case, you can supplement the open-air design with up to two 360mm liquid cooling radiators, up to a 190mm high CPU cooler, and up to nine case fans.
Finally, the front I/O consists of a USB 3.1 Type-C port, four USB 3.0 Type-A ports, a 3.5mm audio jack, and a button to control the RGB lighting.
There's no word yet on when the Cougar Gaming Cratus will be available or how much it will cost. As points of reference when it comes to Cougar's unique cases, its Conquer 2 commands $340 on Amazon via a marketplace seller (it's a little cheaper if you look around), while its Blazer Essence sells for $176.99 on Newegg.
