APEX MI-100 Black / Mirror finish Steel Mini-ITX Tower Computer Case 250W Power Supply

Excellent Case

Reviewed By: some guy on 1/11/2009

Tech Level: high - Ownership: 1 day to 1 week

Pros: Lots of room to work with for an itx box. Beautiful finish all around, very nice front panel. Power supply is more than adequate for an Intel Atom board, sata optical and hard drive, and anything else you can fit inside. The PSU fan (a pleasant surprise) is pretty much silent, and makes less noise than the northbridge fan on my Atom 330 mobo. It stays very cool with the one fan and the Atom 330 board. I will definitely use this case again if I build any more Atom machines in the future. A very neat case all around.

Cons: The included power cord is a little short, but you're probably not going to be stretching it across the room anyway. No mention of the power supply cables in the descriptions, I wound up having to buy a molex to sata converter. The PSU has 3 molex, 1 sata, and 1 floppy along with the 20+4 pin connector and a 12v connector. The hardest part of the build was putting the optical drive in, it was a tight squeeze with the wires against the power supply and you have to maneuver it around to get it in place.

Other Thoughts: Please reviewers, don't complain about the case's lack of ventilation when you knew there were no fans when you bought it. That's like buying a Nintendo 64 and then taking an egg off because you can't play Crysis. What you see is what you get.

If you're building a higher end system, buy a pci slot fan for 5 bucks.

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New Version

Reviewed By: FriendlyComputers on 5/31/2008

Tech Level: high - Ownership: 1 month to 1 year

This user purchased this item from Newegg

Pros: I build alot of machines with this case. In the last batch of cases, they changed the power supply wires, yay! As many people have noted the wire were not long enough for many mobos. Now the wire are much longer and you will have no trouble hooking up any mobo.

Cons: PSU can run a tad hot since there isn't much room left for air flow if you fill the case up, but hasn't been an issue to date.

Other Thoughts: Remove PSU before assembly, hard drive mounts sideways in a nifty way to save space.

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Complement to my previous review

Reviewed By: faust67 on 7/11/2008

Tech Level: average - Ownership: 1 day to 1 week

This user purchased this item from Newegg

Pros: I would like to modify my previous review in which I gave only a "good" rating because I didn't like the noise of the fan from the PSU. I have tested every component, one by one, and the PSU is actually almost silent. The noise I was hearing comes from the fan that cools down the chipset (it runs at 5000RPM for a 40mm fan!) and some noise from the hard drive too.

Cons: None

Other Thoughts: Should have checked my information before posting. Sorry.

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Reviewed By: KC on 7/13/2010

Tech Level: high - Ownership: less than 1 day

This user purchased this item from Newegg

Pros: Would be a nice looking case if the mirror finish front panel was not already scratched up upon opening up the box.

Cons: Mirror finish front panel was already scratched up.

Other Thoughts: It's strange that the case comes with all surfaces having protective sticky wrap including the bottom portion of the front BUT doesn't have any protective sticky wrap on the actual mirror finish part of the front panel. But the box was definitely newly sealed, so I guess that's how it's packaged...unfortunately.

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Avoid Apex

Reviewed By: on 7/2/2010

Tech Level: high - Ownership: 1 month to 1 year

Pros: None.

Cons: Power supply died in one day.

Other Thoughts: I've owned this for two months. Mobo was backordered so I didn't get to try it out. Turns out it had a bad power supply and I was beyond the return window.
Think Apex stands behind a DOA product?
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Unfortunately, since you did not buy directly from Apex, and Apex does not sell to ____, we are not able to issue an RMA for you. We can only provide RMA for distributors who buy directly from us, we do not issue RMA for third party resellers. To claim the warranty on the defective item, you need to go through ____. Our company only processes warranties for our distributors. Sorry for an inconvenience.

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Nice Case

Reviewed By: Wes on 6/10/2010

Tech Level: high - Ownership: 1 day to 1 week

This user purchased this item from Newegg

Pros: - Nice quality case components & general design.
- Small on the outside.
- Can support 2 3.5" drives & a DVD drive (with careful cable routing).
- Excellent value if you can get it on special.
- Nice looking case.

Cons: - Difficult to route your cables if you've got a DVD drive & 2 HD.
- Will almost certainly need some sort of fan.
- Power/reset buttons aren't great.

Other Thoughts: This unit does not have a fan other than the one in the power supply. I got a PCI card fan for $10 & am happy with the temperatures. Definitely take out the PSU before trying to install anything. Also be ready to route & reroute cables. Finally, a full sized DVD drive will almost touch the PSU, so take that into consideration.

I would purchase one again & I'm fairly picky.

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