Apevia X-QPack

Thoughts

Summing up the Apevia X-QPack is a fairly easy job. It is a case which has some great touches and some good thoughts - 120mm fan for cooling in a small space, removable motherboard tray for building efficiently in a small space - that are marred by shoddy execution.

The materials used are simply too flimsy for this to be a case that we could ever recommend. The paper thin motherboard tray that is liable to slice your thumbs open is a blight on an otherwise great feature. The bend-u-like one-piece cover, whilst nattily pre-case-windowed, is not going to withstand the constant on-off fiddling that enthusiasts require.

The PSU is not ideal, although it is small. It is not going to power an enthusiast grade system, or even anything approaching that level to be frank. This is a shame, since the Micro-ATX angle makes it ideal for DIY'ers.

It's extremely annoying that, given the removable motherboard tray, the drive bays are riveted in. Apevia has improved on Shuttle in one sense and proven worse in another.

Lastly, it also looks awful. We don't have anything against plastic fascias per se, but ones as chunky and fugly as this are just not appealing to anyone. Sure, the case is relatively cheap, but even a sleek, plain black fascia would have looked better than this.

In the pictures above, we've tried to show you how thin some of the metal in this case is. You have to look carefully to even see the vertical surfaces. We appreciate that aluminium needs to be thin and light, but it also needs to hold a case together.

If we seem a little harsh on this case, it's just because there was potential here for so much more. We'd like to see Apevia come and do a second run at this case with some better materials and better industrial design.

If you'd like to check it out in the mean time, you can head over to The Cooling Shop where the case can be had for the princely sum of £68.