As mentioned previously, the Ultra m998 lends a very simplistic design, with no lights or fancy accessories to speak of. The only color variation on the entire case is the Ultra logo in the lower front corner. There is a side panel window with a pair of grills in place, the whole thing covered with a sheet of plastic to protect from scratches during shipping. The surface of the sides and top panels have a brushed aluminum texture that is anodized black, giving it a semi-gloss appearance. The front panel is molded from flat black plastic that appears somewhat cheap by comparison.




The m998 looks kind of short and fat for a mid-tower case. Measuring at 18"x22"x9½", it is really about average height but adds around 2" in length and another 1-2" in width compared to a typical size. Although constructed of 1.5mm aluminum the m998 tips the scales at more than 18 pounds sans accessories, nearly right up there with many steel mid-towers. As you can see through the window however there appears to be some extra gusseting used that you normally see only in full tower cases. Also the motherboard tray and rear of the case are polished to a mirror finish, and made from stainless steel as it turns out, which adds to the weight as well.




In addition to the normal power/reset buttons and power/hard drive activity LED's situated in the top right corner of the front panel, there is a stealthed flap that opens to reveal USB, Firewire, audio and something fairly uncommon, an eSATA port in the front mounted bracket. eSATA is a standard for external SATA and uses a special cable pin-out to connect compatible devices. Transfer speeds of up to 3.0Gbps (just like regular SATA) are possible, which far surpasses the bandwidth available to the USB 2.0 or IEEE 1394 interface.

Continue for a tour inside the Ultra m998.