Assembly

Installing the motherboard inside the case is straightforward using the spacers and supplied screws. The two grommet covered openings line up well with an ATX board. Thanks to the cutouts to the right of these, if you are using an E-ATX variant you may relocate those grommets to retain the same level of cable routing possibilities. That said, with such a setup you do loose the ability to install fans on the side, which will also hold true in the case of the Apex or Apex Air variants.


Adding an SSD onto the plate also utilizes screws and a screwdriver. Once filled, simply put the tray back into its original position and secure it with the thumb screw.


To include a 3.5" drive, you have to pull out the cage underneath the shroud and secure the unit with the supplied screws. The cage can hold either two 3.5" variants or a mix of one 3.5" alongside one 2.5" unit. Once you have installed your drive within, simply slide it back into place. Thanks to the rubber ringed screws that hold it in place on the floor of the chassis, you should be able to get away with not using the final thumbscrew unless you plan to transport your system somewhere.


The same trend of installation continues with the PSU, which also goes for classic screws. Simply slide it underneath the shroud and screw it down from the back of the chassis. As you can see, there is plenty of room so you should have no issues in choosing your favorite unit, regardless of your needs, for all but the most extreme scenarios.


Lastly, while you can install a 420 AIO in the front, we opted to place our 360 mm unit in the ceiling, as it is the biggest one we have for our review builds anyway. It fits really well with good access to the motherboard connectors at the top edge and there is enough clearance above the larger 140 mm fan as well, which is nice and an important detail.


With everything installed, the interior makes a good impression overall. The GPU power cable was routed through an opening at the back of the shroud, as that fits the GeForce RTX 40 series graphics card best. As you can see between the GPU and the floor fan, there isn't really much room to install a lot of additional expansion cards, which makes it apparent that the fan encroaches on the bottom most PCIe slot of the motherboard. On the backside the Chieftec Apex Q manages to look orderly as well, thanks to the ability to spread the cables along several paths with zip tie hooks. While we used a lot of zip ties, you should be able to make do with what Chieftec provides with the case alongside a bit of pre-planning.

Finished Looks

Turning the unit on, there isn't a lot to tell you that things are powered on due to the lack of RGB or windows. As such, the only visual indicator is the power LED around the square power button. That is naturally a selling point of the Apex Q as it targets users who just want a quiet and functional system that doesn't draw any unnecessary attention.