Published in Reviews

Cooltek Ultimate Case reviewed

by on22 November 2010

Index


The top panel isn't flat, but rather curved making the CUC seem taller than it is. Within the case you'll find plenty of space for standard configurations, but it might be a bit small for some chunkier CPU coolers.
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Unfortunately, our Prolimatech Armageddon CPU cooler wasn’t quite a great fit – as you can see from the picture below.
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You will have to make sure that the CPU cooler’s width doesn’t exceed the upper edge of your motherboard by more than 1cm if you’re planning on this case. We ended up using CoolerMaster’s passive Hyper Z600, which fit like a glove leaving about 1cm between the top panel fans and the CPU cooler.
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Graphics cards, on the other hand, are covered just fine and the case will take HD 5970-sized cards with ease.

CUC will take five 5.25’’ optical devices and, as you can see from the picture below, Cooltek used toolless mechanisms. 

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The case has five drive bays. The bays are universal meaning they’ll take 3.5’’ or 2.5’’ devices.

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The bays seem frail and are pretty light, but we must admit they’re quite functional. They’re easily taken out and are stable when in place.
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The entire HDD bay cage can be easily dismounted – a simple tug will do. As you can see from the picture, it reveals the front panel fan.

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The fan on the front panel is a 14cm blue LED fan. It’s connected to the control board via a special connector but the fan’s RPM can’t be controlled, which is the case with the rest of the fans as well. The control panel is used to independently turn the fans on or off.

Seven expansion slots feature a tool free locking mechanism which we must admit comes in pretty handy. If, however, you like the old fashioned methods, you can dismount the locking mechanism.

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The thumbscrews holding the side panels unfortunately won’t fit here because they’re wider.

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Once the metal slot caps are removed they can’t be put back. However, the company says that retail cases will actually have replaceable caps.
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Rubber seals are always a welcome touch although we’re more used to seeing them shipped with PSUs; not that we’re complaining, of course. As you can see from the picture below, CUC comes with preinstalled seals.

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The bottom panel has room for one optional 14cm/12cm fan.

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There’s plenty of holes and room for cable management. The task of arranging the forests of cabling won’t be a problem in tthe CUC because Cooltek provided cable straps on quite a few spots. Some much more expensive cases don’t feature this and we’d very much like to see other manufacturers following suit – it doesn’t even cost that much but it makes a difference.
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The PU socket hole is pretty large and you shouldn’t have much trouble mounting large CPU cooling backplates.
Last modified on 23 November 2010
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