Installation Notes

Working with the V1000 was not difficult, but it was not the easiest case we've had the pleasure of working with. We noted the IDE cable issues earlier, but we also ran into problems one of our power supplies. The Ultra X-Connect simply does not work with the V1000 due to the thickness and location of its cables. The PSU simply would not fit into its chamber. We have also heard reports that larger PSUs would not fit either, so it would be a good idea to inquire ahead of time if your PSU doesn't follow the ATX specification.

I also had to give it a few tries until I found the perfect position of the DVD drive so that the stealth panel properly made contact with the drive's eject button. You'll also have to be aware that if you use this drive bezel, you'll lose the drive's skip or play functionality if it has one.

While the 5.25" drive installation was not tooless, the hard drive installation more or less was. There are a number of keyed screws included with the V1000, and you use four to install each drive you need. Once you install the screws by hand, you'll need to use a Phillips head screwdriver to tighten them. Once that is done, choose a HDD rack and push the drive in until it locks. I found this method of installation much easier and quicker than conventional drive rails, and just as secure.

Cooling Performance - Full Load

MSI 915P Neo2 Platinum: Intel P4 560, 2 x 512MB Corsair TWINX PC5400 Pro, ATI All-In-Wonder X600 Pro, 160GB Seagate SATA 7200.7

The comparison case for the review will be an Antec P160 and Cooler Master Cavalier 1, both of which use 120mm fans for cooling, though the Cavalier only uses one. The P4 560 will be cooled by Cooler Master's Hyper 48 fan. All case fans were enabled and run at default speeds.

Prime95 was run for nine hours, with Folding @ Home running in the background everyday for four days to load the system and allow the thermal paste to even out. During the actual tests, we ran SiSoft Sandra's CPU Burn for 15 minutes, with Folding @ Home running in the background. Ambient room temperature was maintained at 23°C/74°F.

Well, I'm not even going to get into the CPU temperatures as it's fairly obvious that air cooling the Prescott is not the ideal way to do things. Nonetheless, the V1000 fell between the Antec and Cooler Master for both CPU and case temperatures.

Final Words

The Lian-Li PC-V1000 was something of a hit and miss in our testing today. The design is certainly something unique, but being different is not necessarily being better. The highlights of the V1000 is certainly the aluminum construction, and generally being tooless.

The flaws are many though, and are the direct result of the design of the case. While we can appreciate Lian-Li's attempt of bringing a semi-BTX design to the V1000, we did not see much of a benefit for cooling. To start, the front case fan gets little to no airflow to the motherboard as the segmented area it resides in blocks most of it. The PSU installation also negates any case cooling ability of the PSU as the fan is blocked off from the rest of the chassis. This leaves the lone 120mm rear fan as the sole source of cooling for the motherboard and system.

While the perforated front bezel allows some airflow through the chassis, there is no active cooling drawing the air into the main area, forcing the rear fan and CPU fan to do most of the work. While the CPU's temperature was alright (for air cooling), the Hyper 48's temperature controlled fan was forced to run full speed continuously, even under light to moderate load in the V1000, thus creating more noise than it would in a well cooled chassis. For the other two cases, the Antec allowed the Hyper 48's fan to stay in the low range, while in the Cooler Master, the fan was running at about medium.

Installation-wise, the case design made sense, but your options will be somewhat limited in a few areas. To start, IDE hard drives will have some issues unless you use a 24" IDE cable. The PSU will need to be a "standard" PSU as our modular one would not fit at all. Keep in mind that the size of the PSU will also limit your options as oversized PSUs will not fit into the chamber.

Pros: Aluminum design, sturdy, fairly attractive.

Cons: Subpar cooling performance, noisy, no reset button, will have issues with some PSUs.

Bottom Line: Overall, many of the V1000's issues are workable, and if the aesthetics are to your liking, you'll probably be very happy with the case. Personally, we think Lian-Li needs to rework some of the design details and improve the cooling performance before we give this case a recommendation.