Xigmatek Utgard Case Review

1. Introduction2. The Xigmatek Utgard (External)3. The Xigmatek Utgard (Internal)4. The System Build5. Testing Methodology and Performance Results6. Acoustic Performance7. Closing Thoughts8. View All Pages

2010 has been a fantastic year for quality chassis design and today we are going to have our first look at a chassis from Xigmatek, a company better known for their coolers and power supplies.

Following with traditional Xigmatek marketing concepts, the Utgard is a product clearly paying homage to Tolkien fantasy roots. The case is a hybrid SECC and steel mesh design allowing for a maximum of 9 fans to be connected.

The case is offered in three versions: A solid side panel, a window and a metal mesh. We received the solid side panel flavour with dual fan mounts (pictured below).

Product Overview

• All mesh design on front panel.
• Screw-less tooling for 5.25″ bay installation.
• Screw-less tooling for expansion slot installation.
• Four 3.5″ HDD in three 5.25″ bay adapter.
• Preinstalled 170mm top orange fan with white LED.
• Preinstalled 120mm front and rear orange fans with white LED.
• Two RPM speed control knobs for six fans.
• Back window for easy CPU cooler back plate.
• Back holes and clips for cable management.
• Anti-vibration rubber for PSU.
• 222(W) x 515(H) x 490(D) mm (8.7*20.3*19.3 inches)

Xigmatek are known for their bold and rather dramatic box designs. The Utgard is shipped with a ominous black stone fantasy castle on the left and images of the product on the right.

The case is shipped between two heavy duty pieces of foam. It is also covered in a thin layer of protective plastic to help stop minor abrasions.

Inside we have a little manual, necessary mounting screws, a speaker, rubber covers for watercooling and cable routing clips.

The case looks very attractive, with a very evenly balanced paint process applied. The plastic areas are well constructed and will be able to take a fair amount of abuse.

The front of the case is completely composed of drive bay slots, featuring metal mesh covers. One of the drive bays can be used for a 3.5 inch device and another holds the Xigmatek logo. These can be moved to suit specific tastes.

The I/O at the top is fully loaded and angled to give a more attractive appearance. Xigmatek have not included a reset button which is an unusual design decision and some people may be annoyed at this omission. There are two eSATA connectors which is again a rather unusual choice, but one I personally appreciate, as I use several eSATA based peripherals.

There are two control knobs to adjust the speed of up to six fans, three per channel. 4 USB 2.0 ports are also included with a power switch and audio and headphone connectors. One of the best front panels we have seen in a long time.

From a top down view the case has a slightly menacing look, with two vents on the motherboard side to allow for improved air flow.  The top mesh section can be removed, but more on this later.

From the other side, we can see two fan mount locations, which when not occupied does look rather nasty. We think people have no option but to fill these, otherwise the case will look really ugly when the final build is completed. Xigmatek do include several fans with the purchase, but none on the side panels.

Underneath the case we have four rubber feet with a removable dust filter protecting the power supply. A fan can also be mounted next to the power supply, internally.

The rear of the case has a 120mm exhaust fan mounted with 7 expansion slot locations below. There are also options for watercooling, when using the supplied rubber watercooling mounts.

Removing the top section grants access to the 170mm exhaust fan. This area can be used to hold a radiator so it won't interfere with your motherboard fitting.

Each side panel is removed with two thumbscrews on each side. The interior is painted black with  sexy orange accenting on the rear expansion slots, fan blades and drive bays.

The interior is not going to break any new ground for radical design, but it is neat, well finished and looks very appealing. Xigmatek have rounded all the sharp edges to prevent any possible injury during a system build. There is also a CPU backplate hole and some routing locations. All of the nine 5.25 inch drive bays have plastic sliding locks on them. We found them a little fiddly to use to be honest, but they do the job.

There is a 120mm intake fan at the bottom which is attached to a drive bay. Three drives can be fitted here.

The 120mm and 170mm exhaust fans, to ensure heat gets removed from both rear and top locations.

The 5.35 to 3.5 inch adapter bracket can be used to mount devices, such as a USB 3.0 header bay as seen above.

All of the cables trail from the front I/O panel directly in the middle of the bays. We would have prefered if this was offset, for easier routing later in the build phase.

The power supply is mounted at the rear, and a fan can be added in front of it – Xigmatek have included a removable dust filter here.

The 7 expansion bays have retention clips which are made from orange coloured plastic. They certainly don't look as good as recent Lian Li designs, but considering the price differences this is to be expected.

The other side of the case is a simple enough design with a few routing areas and a huge cut out for easy processor back plate mounting.

For this build we are using the Thermaltake ToughPower 750W power supply. Why no red stripe around it ? Sadly during testing, the stripe had to be torn to get inside. Not the best design idea from Thermaltake, but the unit itself is great. Due to the slightly rounded edges of this specific PSU we had to use the bundled Thermaltake screws, rather than the shorter Xigmatek versions.

If you are installing a watercooling kit, then the top section has a detachable hood. This is removed by simply pulling on the tray.

The top I/O has two fan speed knobs which can be used to control up to six fans, in two banks of three. This is achieved by connecting to headers marked A1/2/3 and B1/2/3. The main power is then taken from a molex connector.

It is a great idea, but it seems almost impossible to keep the build tidy with so many cables running from all case locations.

Installing the motherboard is a straightforward process and there is plenty of room around the motherboard for the building process.

As a system test, we like to use the biggest video card we have which is the HD5870 modified Arctic Cooling Accelero XTREME. As this is 31cm long, you can be guaranteed if this cooler fits then any video card on the market right now will also fit.

The fact that the power connectors fit  along the length of the PCB means cable routing also needs to be taken into consideration. The orange locking expansion connectors are not the best we have used and are clearly built to a specific price point. We wouldn't say they were poor but they feel a little cheap, especially when compared to some of the recent metal designs we have tested.

As the image above shows, the card did fit inside the case, but it was rather snug.

The top of the chassis has plenty of room for working inside and we liked the internal design. We don't fit optical drives anymore, prefering to rely on USB and network software installations, but the mounting system is the same as the USB 3.0 drive adapter we installed, which works fine. Installing a hard drive is much like any other case, but we recommend you do it first, as drives are mounted back to front which can make getting past a long video card rather difficult.

Our final build was painless and didn't take a long time, there are no issues with the overall design.

As we mentioned earlier, the Utgard has three versions of side panel on offer. Ours shipped with the enclosed design which allows for two fans to be attached. The only problem is that without fans installed, the panel looks terrible, with gaping vents side by side. We fitted two Noctua fans – a 120mm fan and a 140mm fan. Although we have mounted both as exhaust in the images above, it is feasible to use one as intake and the other as exhaust.

The finished product, we think it looks rather appealing.

For our testing today we are using a Core i7 920 D0 system which we will overclock to 4.1ghz later.

Chassis: Xigmatek Utgard
Processor: Intel Core i7 920 D0
Motherboard: ASRock X58 Extreme 6
Cooler: Arctic Cooling Freezer 13
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Tracer (thanks to Crucial as always for this)
Storage: GSkill 60GB Sandforce SSD
Graphics: HD5870 modified Arctic Cooling Accelero XTREME
Power Supply: Thermaltake ToughPower 750W

Windows 7 Ultimate Edition 64bit

Thermal Diodes
Raytek Laser Temp Gun 3i LSRC/MT4 Mini Temp
Digital Sound Level Noise Decibel Meter Style 2

Firstly let us have a look at the chassis design and airflow, as it comes ‘out of the box’.

The Utgard follows a traditional front to rear flow design which has been proven to work well. There are two 120mm fans, one at front acting as an intake with the other at the rear performing duties as an exhaust. The 170mm top mounted fan acts as a vertical exhaust directly in the vicinity of the CPU cooler. We are not using the 120mm and 140mm Noctua fans which we fitted to the side panels for this part of the testing. Fans were set to a mid way point between low and high with the control knobs.

Thanks to the decent airflow from the dual 120 mm and single 170mm fans, the system remains almost at ambient temperatures across all of our diode testing.

Now we want to overclock the 920 D0 to 4.1ghz to see how this will effect not only CPU temperatures, but ambient flow.

Diode 3 & 5 rose a single degree over sustained stress testing and the CPU peaked around 78c.

Now we will add the 120mm and 140 Noctua fans, with the 140mm acting as intake and the 120mm acting as exhaust.

With the extra fans, ambient temperatures in the center and rear of the case dropped by several degrees and this also helped to cool the graphics card and expel radiated heat. Motherboard temperatures also dropped by a couple of degrees. CPU temperatures were basically unaffected.

We take the issue of noise very seriously at KitGuru and this is why we have built a special home brew system as a reference point when we test noise levels of various components. Why do this? Well this means we can eliminate secondary noise pollution in the test room and concentrate on components we are testing. It also brings us slightly closer to industry standards, such as DIN 45635.

Today to test the chassis we have taken it into our acoustics room environment and have set our Digital Sound Level Noise Decibel Meter Style 2 one meter away from the case. The room rates as 21-23dBa before powering on the system (air conditioning unit in the far corner of the room causes this).

We have removed our Noctua fans from the side panels to measure a ‘out of the box' scenario. We tested with fan controls on high and low.

As this can be a little confusing for people, here are various dBa ratings in with real world situations to help describe the various levels.

KitGuru noise guide
10dBA – Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves
20-25dBA – Whisper
30dBA – High Quality Computer fan
40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refridgerator
50dBA – Normal Conversation
60dBA – Laughter
70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer
80dBA – City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal
90dBA – Motorcycle or Lawnmower
100dBA – MP3 player at maximum output
110dBA – Orchestra
120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine
130dBA – Threshold of Pain
140dBA – Military Jet takeoff/Gunshot (close range)
160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum

We have replaced the graphics card with a Sapphire HD5670 Ultimate edition.

At low the system is very quiet, barely registering against the CPU cooler. At high the fans speed up and the noise levels also increase to just over 40dBA. We would run this system with fans at low at all times, it didn't really make much difference to the temperatures at all.

While the Utgard box artwork looks rather garish, the product itself is actually very good. The finish is to a very high standard and Xigmatek have clearly spent time maximising the quality while building to a very specific price point.

Internally, the quality remains high with only minor concerns over the plastic drive clips and expansion bay holders. The paint work is fantastic throughout and we like the fact that Xigmatek are selling the chassis with three side panel options.

The version we tested really needs two side fans installed or it does look ‘unfinished'. I think Xigmatek could have covered these with two plates to enhance the appearance, especially if the end user didn't wish to add fans.

The dual method for tuning six fans is also a welcome addition and gives the user more fine control when balancing system noise against cooling proficency. We would always have these down as low as possible, but perhaps we have sensitive ears. Hard core gamers probably won't care as much about noise and the fact we managed to fit a 31cm video card will appease a wide audience.

The Front I/O really is brilliant, there is so much connectivity at your fingertips with even dual eSATA connectors offered for easy drive access.

In the competitive sub £100 sector much of the analysis has to revolve around the price point and Xigmatek have really delivered a competitively priced chassis to the mainstream audience. At £67 inc vat, it is hard to find fault even if we pointed out a few areas for possible improvement earlier in the review.

KitGuru says: At this price it really is a solid investment and worth shortlisting. The curves are appealing and the technical design is sound.

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