Inside The Blackhawk Ultra
Designed to support motherboards up to 15 inches wide (HPTX), the Blackhawk Ultra’s CPU bracket access hole is so large that it extends past the front edge of a mini-ITX board. Par for the course in oversized ATX cases, every ATX standard between those two extremes also fits (microATX, full ATX, XL-ATX, and so on).
Some of the cable access holes are enormous, and even the largest is fitted with a grommet. The similarly-huge hard drive cage includes ten trays with ample air space between them. A push-pull configuration of four fans is designed to move heat away from this area.
The Blackhawk Ultra doesn’t have a fan controller, but it does have a pair of fan power adapters. You only need a single four-pin hard drive connector to power both, since Rosewill patches them together with an extension cable.
The Blackhawk Ultra’s bottom panel is drilled for up to three fans of various sizes (up to 140 mm), but Rosewill only specifies it to hold one. That’s probably because at least one of the holes is covered by any bottom-mounted power supply, and switching power to the top bay forces builders to remove one of the top fans.
Fitted by Rosewill with two 230 mm fans, the top panel can also support up to three 140 mm or 120 mm fans. Though it probably doesn’t have space for a 3 x 140 mm radiator configuration, hole spacing is appropriate for triple 120 mm (so-called 360 mm) radiators.
The Blackhawk Ultra has ample space behind the motherboard tray for cables, but there’s a catch. Actually, there are several catches. Because the top and bottom edges of the side panels are lined with three slide-tab catches, and because the side panels are flexy, you might need four or more hands to get the panel back on. Any cables pushing back against the side panel will make the panel even more difficult to get into place.
