A Closer Look

The front of the case does not have any moving parts like doors. The front I/O is placed all the way up top, making it easy to reach, if the case is placed under the desk. Right below that, a 3.5" drive bay for floppy drives or card readers is found. The four drive bays for 5.25" drives are just below that. As you can see the Ultra brand name is present everywhere - in this case a large extruded "ULTRA" as well as a small Ultra logo on the bottom of the case. That does look quite nice overall. The back has nothing out of the ordinary, besides the easily removable PCI brackets. No need to break them out, as they are just clipped on. Very nice!


The window includes an 80 mm fan hole with air duct right above the CPU. It is covered by an Ultra fan grill as well as a black, fine meshed metal sheet on the inside of the window. The bottom of the window has a grill right above the expansion slots. This lets fresh air pass through the side to cool the installed expansion and graphic cards.


The back of the case sports a single, but very quiet 120 mm fan. This is the same fan as the ones used in the Ultra Grid (which we reviewed here). The expansion cards can be mounted completely without the use of any screws. This is a great step up from the Ultra Grid. You just push the black lever up, pull it away from the expansion slot. Then insert the card and push back the lever. Then just push it down, to lock it into place. Well done Ultra.


The drive bays look quite normal, but there you may be wondering where all the screw holes have gone. Ultra has equipped this case with drive rails so there is no need for the usual holes to mount the drives.

The bottom front of the case can be equipped with a second 120 mm fan, but Ultra decided not to include one.


The rails are kept in two trays, are completely screw-less and can be clipped on the side of the drives to be installed. Ultra has also made sure that exotic items like LCD displays can still be mounted the old fashioned way, using normal screws. This is a big improvement compared to the system used in the Grid case.


The connectors used to connect power, USB, FireWire and Audio are completely standard and will fit on any retail mainboard.