Mine didn't come with a HDD but mine is secondhand/refurbished. I think new ones don't come with a HDD either but I'm not sure. Maybe some do or maybe the dealer puts them in.
So far I've only tried mine with an old Seagate drive I had. The drive is 30 gig and noisy. Until I get myself a new drive I can't really say much about the PVR operation of the unit.
And to top that off I've got an unusual satellite hookup that keeps changing! What I mean by that is that I have reception of 4 satellites via two DiSEqC switches, two dishes and all but one of the LNBs is single - the other being a twin but with one output going to my Sky box!
Ideally I'd have two exact same feeds, one going into tuner one, the other into tuner two of the Ultimate. That way I'd be able to watch and record any combination of channels on any of the 4 satellites. Right now I can't do that but the beauty of the Ultimate is that you can hook up each tuner as if it were a completley different satellite receiver. There's complete flexibilty. If I one had reception of one satellite, and that was via a single LNB - well I could loopthrough to the second tuner and watch and record any combination of channels in the right frequency band and polarity.
I like the picture-in-picture, the tuner sensitivity and like I said, the LNB/dish flexibility but there are many faults/flaws and that lack of support. I wouldn't have wanted to have payed the full asking price for the unit and when I bought it I took into account the lack of support (official and otherwise) as I already have a Fortec Diamond.
Funnily enough, the Diamond seems to be getting more support now that I have an Ultimate. And the Ultimate's tuner picks up channels I can't get with the Diamond! Argh! One of the only Fortec receivers that have been left behind in the updates for a certain continental PPV service is the Ultimate.
As for the fan, I guess one can be adopted. I've got one in my PC that piggybacks on the power cord going into either a DVD/HDD. Something like that could go inside the Ultimate I guess.