APEX MI-008 Black Steel Mini-ITX Tower Computer Case 250W Power Supply - Retail

APEX MI-008

Reviewed By: stevieep on 8/30/2008

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

This user purchased this item from Newegg

Pros: This is an awesome little case! It is pretty sturdy and looks great. The internal layout was perfect for my build. The vent on the side of the case fits 2 80mm fans. The PSU seems to be working fine so far... You can mount 2 3.5 harddrives in this case, one in the external 3.5 and the other where the vents are (brackets are included)...but the 80mm fans are a must unless you use a PCI slot cooler (its still going to be hot). Awesome case! Newegg is awesome as always.

Cons: It was hard to find a CPU cooler that would mount under the PSU. You have less than 50mm clearance. I had to go for the Silverstone NT07. No reset button. The manual is garbage...but who needs one.

Other Thoughts: APEX MI-008; AMD X2 5400BE; Jetway JNC62K w/ onboard GF 8200; 2Gb G.Skill DDR2 800; 300Gb VelociRaptor; Vista Home Premium

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Reviewed By: Ang on 5/9/2009

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

This user purchased this item from Newegg

Pros: This is an awesome little case. For a very reasonable price the case comes with everything you need and nothing you do not.

I used this case to build a small surveillance camera server running Windows XP Pro, and I had no problems fitting anything into the case, despite its size it is very roomy. Fitting a Mini-ITX motherboard was a breeze and I even had enough room to add a 120mm case fan on the side with the vent, doing this greatly reduced internal temps! I put my SATA 3.5" HDD in the floppy area and that only made ventilation even better.

Basically I have to give this case 5/5, I had the whole system built in less than 15 minutes.

Cons: It doesn't feed my dog.

Other Thoughts: Great price, wonderful quality, highly recommended.

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I ran out of space in my review

Reviewed By: chr on 11/19/2009

Tech Level: somewhat high - Ownership: 1 week to 1 month

This user purchased this item from Newegg

Pros: I was glad that there were vents on both sides of the case. The power supply has more connections than I think you could possibly need. Two SATA, 1 molex by itself, and two more molex pig-tailed together with a floppy power connector.

Cons: I would have preferred all SATA connectors, or at least more than two.

Other Thoughts: I've read some people say that the eject button doesn't line up with the button on their optical drive. That's because they didn't realize that it's adjustable. You have to slide the white piece over so that it lines up. Once that is done, it works, but you have to push the button in a long way to engage the button on the drive.

Before complaining about the quality, read the specs, and look at the price. yes the metal is thin. Yes, if you try, you can break it. If you want something fancy, you might have to spend more than $40. this case is amazing for the price. the power supply doesn't make any noise, and it's not a bad looking case. It is a good low-budget case for building a low-budget, somewhat high-performance computer. You can fit 3.5"hdd and regular size optical drives, but it's still pretty small

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Good, cheap, small case

Reviewed By: chr on 11/19/2009

Tech Level: somewhat high - Ownership: 1 week to 1 month

This user purchased this item from Newegg

Pros: size
flexibility
quiet power supply
simple design
I really like this case.

I bought this case because 1) it was cheap, 2) it has space for a regular (not slim) optical drive (but it can't be too long or it will hit the power supply) and a 3.5" hdd, 3) it has a simple black design. I was able to put in a tv tuner card. I added a Scythe SFF21D 120mm fan because it got too hot with the cover on otherwise. It was a very tight fit on the right side where the hard disk is supposed to go.

Cons: I would have given it 5 eggs, but when I tried to remove the screws on the back of the case that were holding the cover on, two of them were stripped. They would just spin in place. I had to wedge a screwdriver under the screw heads so the threads would catch and the screws finally came out. Although that was annoying, it's not so bad, because the cover fits snugly without the screws.

The stock hard drive position is useless to me. I had temperature problems with the cover on until I installed a fan. It would be better for Apex to put a fan in this spot than a slot for a hard drive.

Other Thoughts: I am using an Intel dg45fc motherboard with an e8200 cpu. The stock heatsink and fan fit under the powersupply. Because the powersupply fan and the cpu fan are facing each other by default, I turned the power supply upside down (right side up?) and drilled a bunch of holes in the top of the cover so that the power supply can suck in fresh air and the cpu fan is undisturbed. I put an optical drive in its bay, and a 3.5" hdd in the external 3.5" bay. I had to drill holes and mount the hard disk upside down because the power connector would have hit the cpu fan if it was right side up. Regular height memory fit, but it's all very tight. Being creative with wiring is helpful and important.

This case is exactly what I expected. I wanted the smallest case I could find that would fit 3.5" hdd, optical drive, and tv tuner. Anyone who complains about the size doesn't understand what they are buying. It's supposed to be small. If there was more space, I would have wished it was smaller.

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Defects on Arrival-Bad power supply

Reviewed By: BeatBob on 11/13/2009

Tech Level: high - Ownership: less than 1 day

This user purchased this item from Newegg

Pros: Cheap case so I don't expect much on high quality. But at least expect case should work.

Cons: Defects on arrival with bad power supply, It didn't boot up the intel ITX mobo DC45FC, all I got was the standby LED light on the mobo. I though it was the reset button in the front of the case was bad, but not, I hooked up case fan direct to the 4 pins molex, didn't work. I used a good known working power supply to test the DC45FC mobo, it boot up fine. I RMA'ed this case.

Other Thoughts: I go with Antec IKS-300-65, this is much a better quality case. The downside of this case is it only has 65w laptop ac power supply. This case was designed for Atom. But I used it for intel duo core conroe e6700 (65w cpu) for my HTPC without DVD drive. I changed to a 90w ac power supply to get sufficient power for CPU, 2GB ram. System works flawless. This case fit Nice job for the low profile CPU heatsink, while the APEX MI-008 didn't fit because the power supply was right overhead of the mobo and it didn't have much space height

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