I agree with you 100%, DM. I was never that keen on buying the PC-8N case and, were I starting again, I'd go instead for some other marque, probably a Coolermaster. (Among many others, I'd previously analysed the complete Coolermaster range but had rejected all as unsuited to my particular requirements). I'd definitely buy steel, not aluminium. Steel may be harder to work but it's heavier and stronger. Especially when trying for a quiet PC, you need mass. Among manufacturers of all sorts of PC components, there's now an unfortunate tendency for them to use the absolute minimum amount of materials they think they can get away with. In many cases, that's now resulting in compromised functionality, particularly on the mechanical aspects. I think many manufacturers play on people's inexperience in such things and their general lack of engineering knowhow.
An example on the US3L machine I'm currently building is an extra pair of USB ports (passive ports, working off the US3L mobo) I've installed in one of the spare PCI positions, at the back of the machine; the US3L mobo provides 2 X 2 USB ports for front and rear, beside the normal rear set on the I/O plate. The Lian-Li case came with only the front pair of internal USB leads (incidentally, because of a positioning error on the Lian-Li frontpanel, you can't insert both front USB leads at the same time). So, I had to get a 2-port USB rear carrier from somewhere. That was hard enough in itself but the one I ended up with, costing £5, was (apart from the steel PCI strip itself) made from soft rubber, and of very skeletal construction, at that! This meant that the external USB leads distorted it when pushed in. Also, the screws holding the ports to the strip couldn't be fully tightened, as if you tried to do so, the whole rubber encapsulation would grossly twist. I looked around for a better one but, frankly, they're all like that now (most are made in China). In the days when things were adequately engineered, these USB add-ons consisted of a much harder rubber/plastic and the whole lot was one molded affair. But now, minimum material is the watchword and, in this case, I would say the device is consequently unfit for purpose. Without an alternative, what can you do, though? I've managed to significantly improve the rigidity of the whole thing by partly encapsulating the weak parts of it in epoxy resin. But it doesn't look pretty and I resent having had to do it.