For starters, the case is not as easy to get into. To get at the guts of the system, you have to remove no fewer than 5 screws because you have to remove the top cover before you can get at the side panel. That’s an automatic strike right there for me – the top cover design is a SUPERB idea, but forcing me to remove both top and side panels makes even a simple chore a lot more tedious. Plus, because there is no nifty latching system (a la Antec), you are going to have to screw in at least a few screws to secure the tower. So every time you want to get into the case you have to mess with some tools.

The removable motherboard tray is also hampered by poorly thought out design: you have to remove 6 screws to get it out! The best motherboard tray designs usually depend on a self locking mechanism to keep the tray in place - you know… those trays that require you to LIFT and pull to unlock and track the mother out. These trays are usually further secured either by a single screw, or by piggy backing off a screw that already holds a side panel in place. In the case of the HQ08, the tray does NOT have any sort of self locking position, it just slides in and out if no screws are used, so you are going to have to secure it with screws to play it safe.

Thankfully these negatives are not that serious, thanks to the all important thumbscrews that have become my number one “Must Have” case add-on. The top cover, once you get past its irksome screws, really is a great idea too. Once you pop that sucker off, you have easiest access to the rear of the drive bay area that you are likely ever going to find. This means you can actually look down into the connections of all your CD-ROMs, hard drives, and misc. drive devices, rather than having to strain your neck around the side of the case. Way cool.

The case doesn’t come with any extra fans beyond the high efficiency fan in the 300W power supply, though it does have an additional 80mm fan cage mounted on the lower front. You can just make out additional fan grilles at the back of the case, above the power supply – obviously these were put there so you could pop two 80mm fans into place and kick in some added cooling. You probably also noticed the interesting placement of an additional 3.5” drive cage right about there too. That makes two 3.5” fan cages for a total of 7 internal 3.5” drive bays. A single external 3.5” bay sits at the very top of the case. That’s not too great for some people because they might have a memory card reader, PCMCIA card reader, or some other non-standard external 3.5” device in addition to the floppy disk drive. Meanwhile, there are no fewer than five external 5.25” drive bays ranged just below the 3.5” external bay.