The HFX is a pretty big case, but due to the cooling elements at the side, the space inside is very limited:
This is illustrated (a little) in the picture above. The front of the case is to the left, featuring the CD/Hard disc bay at the top and the Power adapter at the bottom. Interesting is the space for the floppy, which has its opening at the back of the case (who wants to see an ugly floppy drive at the front of a nice HTPC case?).
First thing to do is to install the VFD. The VFG must be installed between the power adapter (which came preinstalled) and the screen at the front of the case. It was impossible to install all the screws on the VFD without removing the power adapter. Since I opted for system with a preinstalled power adapter, I didn’t want to go through uninstalling an reinstalling it. The VFD has to live with two screws. It is very stable, but it would have been nice if Mcubed would have pointed that out somewhere. The following picuters illustrates how much (or not) room there is between the power adapter and the screen:
After installing the VFD I installed the CDROM and the hard drive. To achieve it the drive bay must be removed. This was not so easy, since the longest screwdriver I could get at the local hardware store was just long enough to reach the screws at the bottom of the case. It wouldn’t really fit the screws. But with a little bit of bending, I managed to get the screws out.
The pictures above shows, how the screwdriver is just unable to go any deeper inside of the case to reach the screws. It would have been nice if Mcubed would have thought of this situation. This has caused a lot of problems during the installation of the case.
I mounted the hard drive on some rubber bolts (remember that everything must be silent) and hung it in the bay. After mounting the CDROM the whole bay was put back in its place.