piglover wrote:
Right now its all assembled and living in its permanent home under my desk - I don't have plans to open it up again for a while. But if I do I'll give it a look. Too bad this discussion didn't get to this point 24 hours ago - I had it open twice yesterday evening to ghetto-mod access to the USB2 headers through the I/O shield cutout for the expresscard (long story...).
All I can tell you is that mine seems to have excellent fit for this board (except, as noted above, the one MB mount point that is a bit on the low side).
OK, thanks. Mine seems to fit rather well too after I removed everything but I am not sure if that is because the MB is already deformed to fit the case or because the case fits.
I have a different problem now:

Intel 330 120GB SSD
The intel rapid storage technology tool reports it as SATA 1.5 Gb/s and sure the performance looks like it. All drivers installed straight from Intel website. The BIOS does not even see the drive but Windows did install on it and runs fine* from it... can the motherboard be damaged in a way that would make it revert to SATA 1 but still run reliably? I somehow doubt it... I know this is not AKASA related any more but there is no DQ77KB dedicated thread anyway. Any ideas anyone?
*Except occasional freeze with HDD LED solidly illuminated but that is apparently common problem and probably not related.
EDIT:
Problem sloved by replacing the SATA cable! Apparently the one included with the case is not good enough for SATA 2/3. Wikipedia mentions there are differences in cables between SATA versions but I cannot see Akasa shipping SATA 1 cable. It is probably me being unlucky again and getting faulty cable.
It looks like I may have not damaged my MB after all. Maybe all my problems were caused by this faulty cable. I would still like to know if others have visible bulge around the CPU when the moderboard is secured in place... my guess is it's only around 1-2 mm but it is definitely visible. Also looks like it is bigger when the case is hot but that may be just my eyes playing thicks on me.