Type & style

• Home type: Single Family
• Property subType: Single Family Residence

Bedrooms & bathrooms

• Bedrooms: 3
• Bathrooms: 2
• Full bathrooms: 2
• Main level bathrooms: 2

Material information

• Construction materials: Composite, Lap Siding
• Foundation: Continuous
• Roof: Composition

Condition

• New construction: No
• Year built: 1979

Flooring

• Flooring: Carpet

Heating

• Heating features: Natural Gas, Forced Air

Cooling

• Cooling features: Central Air

Other construction

• Warranty included: Yes

1. LANDLORD MAINTENANCE. Except as otherwise noted, Landlord shall maintain Premises in compliance with the Uniform Statewide Building Code and the VRLTA and shall be responsible for repairs not due to the fault or negligence of Tenant.
   
2. FIXTURES AND APPLIANCES. Landlord shall provide as part of Premises any existing built-in heating and central air conditioning equipment, plumbing and lighting fixtures, storm windows, storm doors, screens, installed wall-to-wall carpeting, exhaust fans, window shades, blinds, window treatment hardware, smoke and heat detectors, TV antennas, sump pumps, exterior trees and shrubs. and such other items as are listed below. Appliances: Gas Range , Dishwasher, Washer Dryer, Refrigerator, Disposal , Microwave
   

1. LANDLORD MAINTENANCE. Except as otherwise noted, Landlord shall maintain Premises in

1. FIXTURES AND APPLIANCES. Landlord shall provide as part of Premises any existing built-in heating

Review

1. Instructions: The written instructions were not great. Had that "draw the rest of the owl" energy to them. The order of the steps in the guide were all over the place for no reason. Please reassign the Extraterrestrial who writes your manuals to other projects. I feel this whole experience could be optimized and dialed in further. Maybe a number system or a colour code. Maybe CM can do a collab with Ikea and have their people help out. My body is ready for blue/yellow cases.
   
2. Flatpack concept: I really love the flatpack case concept; it's a few tweaks away from being great, and it has the potential to become the new standard for budget and mid-range cases. I really hope CM continues with this concept. Fundamentally, it's just 12 screws. 4 in the back, 4 in the front, 2 for the top and 2 for the bottom. All attached to the central Motherboard tray. Really hard to mess up.
   
3. Packaging: very high quality. The diagrams on the interior were not helpful. I think it was missing an overall diagram illustrating that this was packaged in layers, and you were expected to assemble layer by layer. I mean, I figured it out quickly, but a piece of paper at the top announcing what was going to be happening would have been great.
   
4. Case design elements: Lots of fluff text stamped everywhere on the case itself as well, text written about how each panel is steel, or that the glass is glass. We get it CM. The materials are made of materials
   
5. Cooling: It comes with 1 fan which, if that's all the cooling you use, is not going to be enough if its a gaming rig. I do wish an extra fan was included, I associate 1 case fans with budget cases, and this is definitely not budget feeling or priced. I added a few fans cannibalized from the old case, so no big deal.
   
6. Screws: I really appreciate that there was only one size of screws. That was a nice touch. Please only ever do this going forward for all the stuff you make. Give a raise to the person who came up with that idea. The inclusion of only silver coloured screws with the black case was dissapointing. What a weird corner to cut.
   
7. Extras: I really wish I could have bought extra accessories, attachments, panels or parts for the Qube when I ordered it. I understand from the promo materials that it's designed to play nice with 3D printing to some extent, but a modular design BEGS for a part catalogue for customization. The Macaron edition, with its extra cosmetic panels, is a good first step, but those should be available separately too. This case badly needed more options. This could be a flagship product for you guys, if the logistics can keep up with an initial marketing push.
   
8. Radiator Bracket: Without a mesh side panel for the left of the case I'm not sure I understand the point of the hinged radiator bracket. It's certainly not providing much in the way of sturctural integrity and without a flow through for air, why bother? Unless the case can be modded to switch the panels? I read nothing about that in the documentation provided and all the promo pics show it behind the glass panel. Weird. Thankfully it's removeable. If panels can be flipped and moved around, please indicate it more clearly. If they can't, well, why not?
   

Tips and tricks

1. PSU positioning: My pig uses a non-modular ATX PSU. I was very apprehensive as the GPU option I wanted to put in, a 3070, was "too long" technically speaking and although I had a smaller PSU available, I did not want to swap it given the price point I'm going for with this build.
   Thankfully the GPU went in with room to spare. How? Turns out one of the pros of a fully non-modular PSU is all the cables come out in one area and so the spot where PSU connectors would normally interfere with a long GPU is totally clear and Cooler master had a channel just waiting there to route the PSU cables. See here.
   After testing, even if I would have placed the PSU in the lowest mounting bracket offered by the case (for water cooling), there would have been room for a longer GPU with this PSU configuration. Very cool!
   
2. Cable Management: Given that there is plenty of room behind the motherboard tray for cable management and plenty of tie-down points, the Qube turned out to be fantastic for cable management even with all the extra PSU cabling I had to deal with (my Pig also uss a 2.5 SSD drive too). Overall it looks much neater than I expected despite the unshrouded PSU situation. Honestly this might be the thing that surprised me the most about the case. It looks really clean. Granted I did a lot of the cable management as I went, BEFORE the step where CM suggests doing a bit of cable management (lol).
   I really disliked how unhelpful CM's instructions were in this regard. I did all of this out of experience, but I could see new builders getting frustrated. This case has plenty of room to cable manage when disassembled, and it in fact a pretty pleasant experience, but you really need to be diligent and ask yourself at every step what can you tidy up at that point.
   
3. Cooling: A Thermal Right Peerless Assassin 120 SE fits and has plenty of clearance even with the radiator bracket. Sucking in fresh air will be challenging however.
   I mounted fans to the panels as I installed them and spent a good amount of time routing motherboard cables prior to having the side panels locked in to help with airflow and clear obstructions. I used U cable adapters for the GPU's power connectors to keep them flat and out of the way and used black electrician tape to bundle and clean up hanging connectors here and there as much as possible.
   Ultimately, I placed the PSU in the highest bracket as I wanted space for a front fan and airflow. As a result of the PSU situation, I was able to fit a 140 mm fan in the front of the case with no obstruction, as well as another fan at the bottom close to the front's fan, creating a corner intake area. I added two top 140mm fans as well and kept the case's back 120 mm fan.
   
4. Future layout options: I could probably have 3 X 120 mm fans at the bottom of the case, although I'm leaning towards instead getting a PCIE riser cable to vertically mount the GPU. I think it will look nicer and give more room for the air to move diagonally. Based on my rough estimates it should not interfere with the bottom fan I already installed and CM includes an adapter to reorient the slots at the back. This layout possibility was unexpected (as I would have gotten a PCIE riser otherwise). This computer will look much nicer than I expected.
   
5. Power On: Don't forget to switch on the PSU before wrapping up. That said, two screws are between you and lifting the top panel if you did forget so don't worry too much about it.
   
6. Back Fan Cable: The included fan's connector cable position can interfere with the back panel's attachment (it gets squeezed in). I suggest fully routing the cable preemptively before screwing that in.
   
7. Hook up all the Mobo's connectors before screwing the panels together: I suggest routing and connecting anything and everything that latches on to the Motherboard as soon as you can. I'd route the PSU cables before actually attaching the PSU to the case as well, just in case you need to plug and unplug things for cable routing purposes. Once everything is in, especially with a chonky aircooler, it's incredibly difficult to access anything on the Motherboard. Very happy I'm selling this system rather than upgrading it, lol. Accessing the GPU release thingy is a nightmare on a cheaper motherboard. If you do need to do that, remove the bottom panel completely and slide a chopstick under there to press it.
   
8. Fan/RGB connectors: If you go with a Front-Bottom Pull to Top-Back Push airflow configuration, be mindful of the layout of the fan power connectors on your motherboard. You might need a fan controller. Same story with RGB connectors.
   

Suggestions for CM

1. Screw screws: Given the thickness of the panels, a snap system of some kind could have been used instead of screws altogether. A screwless flatpack case... maybe a collab with Lego instead? I'd love to connect the case panels lego style via overlapping panels touch points. If you added lego style texture to different parts of the case the amount of buzz you'd get on social media from people building little worlds in their case would absolutely be worth the hassle.
   
2. Side Panel Cowardice: Very disappointed that there is no left mesh side panel option and just glass. I feel the radiator bracket was included for that use case, but someone at CM chicken'ed out midway through production and here we are, with a useless bracket and a fragile glass panel.
   The glass panel stands out like a sore thumb considering the rest of the case is built like a Tank. Without that glass panel the amount of packaging and therefor the size of the flatpack itself could have been significantly shrunk down further which would have been fantastic. Really a missed opportunity here.
   
3. Give me diversity or documentation (ideally both): Although I appreciate all the different configurations you present outright (air, water, test bench), making side panels interchangeable (left/right) and allowing the front panel to be reversable (top/down) so that the IO is properly oriented for a side build (with feet that can be latched to the side panel), would have been better. Is it possible? I don't know! I did not see any mention of that in the confusing documentation you provided me. If these things ARE possible, then better documentation is necessary.
   
4. Simpler core design, more options: The interior motherboard tray is a bit overengineered. A simpler design could help lower the cost of the case and probably make it easier for you to make. CM could make fancy layouts still possible, by selling optional mobo trays, panels and parts that are compatible with a fundamentally simpler primary design. I think the "Qube 600 / Qube CM X Ikea / Qube CM X Lego / whatever the next iteration is going to be called" should have a much simpler design and instead feature a robust catalogue of optional panels and parts for customization.
   
5. Cable free cutouts: If you insist on overengineering your interior motherboard tray, then the Qube series would be a prime candidate for some of those new "cable-free motherboards" with the cables facing backward that require special cutouts.
   
6. Centre motherboard tray, flipped GPU, wait, did I just invent the Micro-Qube?: Alternatively, including a PCIE riser cable to allow the mounting of the GPU behind the motherboard tray would allow for a shorter tower and the now centred motherboard tray could provide more structural rigidity. "Bottom-Top" or "Side" airflow would be necessary but it would look killer. Maybe that could be the basis of a SFF "M-Qube" design?
   
7. Your hotdog moment: If you are going to include only 1 fan. Can it be nicer? This fan does not make me want to even bother looking at CM fans for the rest of the build. If you cut corners on your case with this fan, what corners are you cutting with your case fans? Think beyond the case for a moment. If you provide consumers with a super amazing fan or two in your cases, with a fairly unique design would that not lead to consumers buying more of the same fans to match? If it's only one fan, sure, swapping that out is doable, but if you include 2 or 3 of those with each case, then swapping all those out feels wasteful. Much easier to just add to them. Especially if they perform well.
   Consider this your Costco Hotdog. Include great fans. Hell, if you want to guarantee people pick your fans, use a bigger form factor (180 mm and 200 mm) If you design them unique enough, you are basically forcing people to buy into your fan ecosystem since there's almost no competition to begin with at those sizes.
   
8. Listen to the Bees: Why is the pattern of a case made by CM, a company with a hexagon as it's logo, circles rather than a grid of hexagons?
   Have you guys not received the memo? Hexagon is the bestagon.
   You need to leverage the competitive advantage you have in this area of geometry and leverage it hard. Across from me now sits the Lian Li 216. You know what I see at the back of it? Lots and lots of CM logos? Why? Because, they paid attention in geometry class and know it's the most efficient design to minimise waste in a pattern. Hexagons = better airflow. CM, wacha doin' baby. This should be YOUR thing.
   You could even integrate hexagons into your IO or better yet, integrate your IO into the hexagon design of your cases. Your case buttons are okay, but you need to do better. Go. Wild. With the motherboard cutouts of the motherboard tray, the screw heads, the included fan(s), if you can shape it like a hexagon, do it. OWN THAT SHAPE!
   I PROMISE you nobody will complain. This is a no-brainer. Come on guys...
   

Conclusion

• I am not a licensed plumber
• I plan on pulling a permit as a homeowner, I am not sure if this nuance will be called out during the plan review or will just be missed and called out at inspection time; want to avoid re-doing work if possible.