Cubitek Tattoo Pro
Nov 15th, 2011 | By SimonEach side panel is held in place with two thumbscrews making it very easy to open up. With the cover off the case looks very spacious and well divided: motherboard section, power supply, 3.5″ drives and 5.25″ drives.
As I started putting my computer back together in the Tattoo Pro a few things came to mind. The first is that if you look closely at the picture above, there are no motherboard stands. You have to manually install the ones you want. I understand this makes it more custom fitted but 99% of the time a regular set of ATX stands is good for a majority of the users out there! Tattoo provides all the hardware you would need for the install but I think this is something that could have came ready. Once the motherboard was installed, I did appreciate the tool-less expansion card installation. Tattoo uses a clip to lock the expansion card in place.
They were also smart enough to include a spare clip for when you snap one in half, as I did. It was actually very easy to replace the clip as you just pull the broke one out and push the new one back into place.
Two other nice features were the tool-less 3.5″ and 5.25″ drives. Each 3.5″ drive comes with side rails that get pushed into the drive. The rails then slide into the cage and you’re done!
The 5.25″ drives are even less work. You only need to push the 5.25″ drive in from the exterior and lock it into place by pushing two sliders into place.
I’ll admit my system isn’t very complicated but the installation procedure took no more than 15 minutes. The power supply installed like most other cases I’ve owned and the fans did not get in my way. With the design of the case you are limited to a 160mm tall HSF and 285mm long graphics card.
Looking at the side panel behind the motherboard we can see how organized Cubitek was. All of the cables are routed in clusters and zip-tied together. There are plenty of openings to feed cables around without making a mess on the window side. However, if you start filling this case up with five 3.5″ drives I can see space getting tight around the bottom.
