Video card in...plenty of room for a 690 or even longer depending on future cards.
Tight squeeze horizontally though. Touches the PSU cage, which I'd imagine is the reason for the plastic or whatever material panel they put there. BE CAREFUL WHEN MOUNTING VIDEO CARD. It's a tight enough squeeze that the little pointy nubs of the components soldered onto the card DO rub when you put the card in. Attempting to push down from the wrong angle could easily snap something off. Plenty of room on the other side though between the case cover and video card cover. The way I initially ran the VGA power cables put a little horizontal pressure on the video card, pushing it out, but once the cover was back on the case I think it evened out a bit due to the stiff foam filter.
Rear view of the video card - it completely blocks all airflow to that side of the case, meaning the AP 181's airflow is only left with 1 direction to exhaust: Out the right side vents of the case. So, I recommend placing the case somewhere the right side and top have plenty of airflow. The left side is the intake for the video card fan in my case, so I don't need much there given that I have a "blower" style cooling system on it. Rear, top, and right side are most important clearance for me.
Optical drive tray putting pressure on cables, pushing them into the video card. I don't like pressure/stresses on thin components...
Side view...hmmmmm.....what can I do with this?
Much better...
Sitting nice and loose now, and still bundled relatively neatly without putting any pressure on the optical drive tray or video card.
AP181 mounted
Top view
Last but not least, the 90 degree SATA cable for the hard drive. My motherboard came with 2 SATA cables - 1 90 degree, 1 straight. Yours may vary but you DO need a 90 degree cable for the 2.5" / SSD positions. Not sure about the 3.5" drive but I've seen a couple other threads on here where people said it helped with those too. From the looks of the positions, I would recommend 90 degree cables for all the "official" mounting positions, but straight cables will work fine if you choose to utilize the optical drive tray as I mentioned before.
Ugh...I need to clean that up. No time during the week though...
Ran into some minor issues creating a boot USB from my Macbook. Had to pull out the work laptop too...but IT'S ALLLIIIIIIIIIIVE!!!!
(except the video card drivers and whatnot weren't installed yet so I had some issues with adjusting the boarder around the screen....it's all perfect now though.)
Monitor is an ASUS VH238H at the moment. Using Turtle Beach PX5 headphones. HP Wireless Elite V2 keyboard with a Logitech VX Nano laptop mouse. Haven't decided yet on whether or not I want to keep the mouse or relegate it back to laptop duty. Thanks for reading, hope you guys enjoyed! If you have any questions about the build or want more pictures I'll do the best I can to help out. Currently trying to figure out why 3dMark11 keeps crashing.