Taking a look at the Ultra-120 itself, you can see that it looks a lot like an upright XP-120. The Ultra-120 is comprised of 54 aluminum fins, four aluminum heat pipes and a smooth, thick, nickel plated base. The cooler stands 160.5mm tall, 132mm wide, 63.5mm thick and weighs 745g (all without fan or fan brackets)! This thing is a mammoth! Down the front, back and sides, each fin has a fold that keeps the fins apart at about 1.5mm apart. From the side, you can see the folds as well as a unique feature of the Ultra-120. The fins have an angle on each side. According to the Thermalright website, this is to further help reduce noise.

At the top of the Thermalright cooler, you can see that the front and back of the Ultra-120 is not flat. Rather, they have gone with a concaved surface. I honesty don’t know why they did this, but I can only assume this helps cut down on noise as well as possible better distribute the airflow amongst the fins. At either side of the very top of the Ultra-120, you can see the four heat pipes sticking out.

At the bottom, you will see that the four heat pipes come out of the fins and pass through the thick, nickel plated, base. The base is fairly shiny and very smooth to the touch. The base is made of two pieces; a bottom and top plate. The bottom plate is considerably thinner than the top plate. This helps bring the heat pipes closer to the heat source as well as the top plate needs depth for the retention brackets, which we will get to during installation.

Along the edge of the fins, there is a slight lip that protrudes. This is to help place the fan correctly on the cooler. Remember those two rubber strips with the sticky backing that I had mentioned earlier? These get placed along these protrusions to help dampen any fan vibration on the cooler, furthering the Thermalright focus on a quiet cooling solution.