Building With The Blackhawk Ultra
I had to use extreme force to slide back the Blackhawk Ultra's side panels and, after injuring myself, was still left with side tabs that caught the edges. Supposing you can get the side panels off, adding parts is fairly simple.
The Blackhawk Ultra has a couple of extra cables for the top-panel drive dock, but the combination is easy to figure out. I just wish Rosewill would remove the AC'97 extension from the HD Audio lead, since the older standard is no longer in use (and hasn't been for a decade).
Drive trays are drilled for both 2.5” and 3.5” form factors, including SSDs. The assumption that any 2.5” drive that makes its way into a desktop PC will be solid-state means that Rosewill doesn’t need to supply those holes with vibration dampening, as it does for 3.5” drives.
The lack of any oddball design features means there isn’t much to discuss when it comes to hardware installation. Everything simply screws together as it would in any other traditional case, and the only thing that stands out is the power supply strap that helps to prevent damage to the relatively thin rear panel if you decide to handle the system roughly.
Fan lighting isn’t so bright as to be distracting. Not that anything hidden beneath a desk would distract us.