A few months back, I was helping my brother work on the engine of a 32 foot sailboat and one thing that always made me wonder is how they squeeze all of that equipment into such a small space. For certain jobs, you almost needed to have a child's hands. When working in these types of environments, it is clear that the engineers who design these mechanical areas are great at cramming everything into a small space. However, they certainly are not thinking about ease of repair. It's a bad situation when you have to disconnect the drive shaft and pull the entire engine to change a common part.

Sometimes repairing laptops, small form factor computers, or even building a small form factor system can be challenging in the same manner. There are situations where your hands are just not small enough to get into a certain location. I never enjoyed having to tear an entire machine apart just to be able to swap something out, especially because I do enjoy tinkering so much. That is not to say that there are not some engineers who try to be creative and improve on designs so that toying with your system is easy. Take, for example, the BitFenix Prodigy M small form factor chassis that uses an innovative layout to help make building a compact system easier.