Written By:
Date Posted: June 25, 2001

How much did you spend on your latest kick ass PC? 1000$? 2000$? 3000$? After buying the PC gear you saved up for, did you stick it into a 50$ beige box? Shame on you!!! In my quest of building the Viper Box, I needed something to enclose all my high end gear. Beige is boring, black is overdone, and the fruity iMac coloured cases are sure to impress your friends. Friends who have no sense of fashion!!

I used to have an InWin Q500, which is a good full tower case, but it was a pain in the hiney to lug it around to LAN parties. As functional as it was, it wasn't anything special appearance-wise. I've been reading about the latest fad, ...aluminum cases. In case you didn't know, these cases are fairly popular overseas, and are now making it's way into North America. The pictures don't do the Lian-Li PC60 justice. The case is amazing. It is expensive, about 175$ US online, with no power supply, but it's definently worth it. You've already spent a couple grand, and would probably spend about 100$ for a case. Spend an extra c-note for this.

Specifications

• All Brushed Aluminum construction, and I mean all aluminum...
• Removable motherboard tray.
• Totally tool-free. We're talking thumbscrew land here kiddies.
• Fan speed control
• 3 x 80mm fans, and front fan filter standard.
• 4 x 5.25" external bays, 3 x 3.5" external bays, 3 x 3.5" internal bays
• 492mm x 210mm x 450mm

The case I ordered had the side and top blowholes done prior to shipping, as well as the addition of a 350W Enermax power supply. Despite it's relatively small size, it is really roomy in there. Because it's made out of aluminum, it's also really light. A weakling, such as myself, will have no problems carrying this baby around. I don't have any weight measurements here, but for those who work in the IT industry, imagine carrying about 2 X-Large pizzas and 1 twelve pack of soda back to your office.

Looking closer here, we can see the fan intakes. There are two 80mm fans hiding back there. They are pretty decent fans, and they're spec'd to pull in 50cfm of air each. Dust would normally be an issue, but luckily, the engineers at Lian-Li added a washable fan filter. A nice touch indeed. The fans can be noisy, though they're easy overpowered by my Delta 60mm fan. You can pop the face plate off, and set the fans to spin slower (sorry for the blurry pic). You'll get less air, but it's supposed to be quieter. IMHO, it's more of a gimmick, since the fans don't seem to be quieter.

One thing I liked about the case was the removable motherboard tray. Most decent cases come with it, and it's good to see that Lian-Li includes it. Another nice touch is the thumbscrews. No more dropping the screwdriver on your big toe.

The caveat to the thumbscrew madness was the PCI/AGP slots. The idea of thumbscrews to add and remove your cards sounds good on paper, but it wasn't well executed here. I don't have huge hands, but they're not small either, and I had a heck of a time removing these screws. The larger size of the thumbscrews meant that they were closer together, but as hard as it was, it wasn't impossible.

As we can see here, my one issue, though not Lian-Li's fault, was the fact that my drives don't match. Of course, it doesn't always have to be that way. =)

With a 4$ can of silver spray paint, I easily matched my floppy and zip drive to the case. I'd do it for my other drives, but I'm still trying to figure out an easy way to mask my Live! Drive II so that I don't paint over the lettering.

So, other than looks and weight, what benefit is there of aluminum? Well, as you prolly know, most heatsinks today are made of aluminum, though copper is making gains in popularity. Heh, a copper HSF is pretty heavy,...imagine what a copper case would weigh? Anyhow, before we go off topic, the whole idea of aluminum cases is that they act like a huge heatsink. Granted, it won't cool your CPU down all that much, but your hard drives, and cdroms run hot, and since they're attached to the case, the heat gets dissapated quicker. I got no way of telling this for sure, but compared to my last InWin case, which had 2 more 80mm fans than the Lian-Li, the system temperature seems to be between 2-5C cooler on average. Helps that I got the side and top blowholes, but so did the InWin.

At 175$ w/o a power supply, it ain't cheap. A regular computer user won't benefit from the ease of use and prolly won't be too impressed with the workmanship. A PC enthusiast will love it though. Besides, most power supplys that come with vanilla cases aren't that good.

Like I said, pictures don't tell the whole tale. It's something that needs to be seen to be appreciated. In fact, the workmanship alone is worth the money. The case is solid as a rock, and little touches like plastic cable organizers, fan filters, and thumbscrews are nice. Considering the fact that this is one of the cheaper aluminum cases, this is a great deal, relatively speaking. I love this case.

Lian-Li:

90%

Pros: Brushed aluminum, solid design, light weight, nice extras, acts like a heatsink, helps you get chicks.

Cons: Expensive, no power supply (though I was glad it wasn't included), wacky PCI thumbscrews.

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