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Lian Li PC20 Case


Date
: 03/15/01 – 11:41:13 PM

Author
:

Category
: Cases

Manufacturer: Lian Li
Price: $216

Introduction

Buying yourself a unique case has been very hard lately. Most people try to make their case unique by modding it with blowholes, plexi windows, … but that does not change the fact that your case is still a very common used computer housing. If you really want to show off at your next LAN party, then Lian Li is what you need. These folks design and build some of the best looking cases around, made with the best material around. Aside from the looks, Lian Li also includes several cool things in their case to make it even better …
Want to know what I am talking about here? Lets find out …

Specifications

Lian Li ain’t just a name … It is a way of living! Everyone who owns a Lian Li case will agree with that statement and when you have seen a Lian Li in real life I am sure you will too! The biggest advantage of getting a Lian Li case, is the fact that they are built out of aluminium. This makes the cases VERY light and easy to carry around (very interesting for LAN gamerz).

Here is the spec list from the Lian Li which we are reviewing today:

Model
: PC-20 (Aluminium color)

Case Size:
ATX Mid-Tower

Main Board Size:
Baby AT, Full-ATX

Drive Bays:
4 x 5-1/4′ External Bays / 3 x 3-1/2′ External Bays / 3 x 3-1/2′ Internal Bays

Expansion Slots:
7 Expansion Slots (1 Shared)

Power Supply:
None

Dimensions:
(W X H X D) 210 x 440 x 485mm / 8.25′ x 17.75′ x 19.25′

Weight (G.W.):
7.4kg

Weight (N.W.):
5.9kg

Chassis:
1.5mm thick aluminium

Specs Explained

As you can see we are taking a closer look at the PC20 Lian Li case today, which is the Aluminium ‘color’ version. It is also available with a black painting and off course the standard beige color we got used to. Personally I like the Alu version best, and that’s why we decided to review that one too :).

The case is not bigger then any other miditower out there, but the space inside (and outside) has been used in a way that this case manages to give you as much room as in some full towers! The case comes with 4 external 5.25′ slots to house your cd-rom, cd-writer, livedrive! and then you still got one left (maybe throw a DigiDoc in there?).To accomodate your 3.5′ floppy drive (as if someone actually uses that thing …), the PC20 comes with 3 external 3.5′ expansion slots and to conclude there are another 3 internal 3.5′ slots to carry your hard drives. When you are only using one 3.5′ external slot (like I am) you can install a total amount of 5(!!) hard drives in this baby. My Supermicro 750A servercase can only carry 4 internal hdd’s and my AOpen HX08 has 5 or 6 (can’t remember exactly) hard drive seats available.

Because the all-alu construction, this case is very light (like I said before) but this certainly doesn’t mean that the case is fragile! In fact it is build with 1.5mm thick aluminium which guarantees that the case will stay in shape when used normally (read: ‘Do not hit it with a car, don’t use it as a replacement of your boomerang, …’).

The second positive note about this case is that no tools are needed to install your hardware (apart from the screws you need to mount the motherboard onto the motherboard tray). Everything is kept in place with slick-looking thumbscrews which of course match the alu look.
Note that the entire case is ‘safe’, meaning that there are no sharp edges anywhere on this case. I like this feature a lot because I can remember some cases which left me with scratches everywhere on my hands and even with blood here and there … No such things will happen when using this mofo, no sir!

Cooling?

A good looking case is nice, but when it does not offer enough cooling capabilities, we don’t want it! The peeps at Lian Li are aware of this and made sure cooling won’t be a problem with the PC20 (none of the Lian Li cases to be more specific).
The general case cooling idea is to pull cold air into the case at the bottom and to expell the hot air at the top rear of the case. Why? Well if we bring cold air into the case at the bottom front, the air can flow over the hardware (where it turns into hot air)and then rise to the top of the case (at the rear). At this point the air is not of any use and so we want to get rid of it.

The engineers at Lian Li designed the PC20 with that idea in mind, because they installed two 80mm ADDA fans in the front bottom of the case, and one 80mm ADDA fan at the rear top of the case, at the same height as the cpu. The two front fans are equiped with a washable dust filter which does a great job keeping dust, cat hair, … and other stuff out of your case without inhibiting the fans from pulling air in. The rear fan does not come with a dust filter because there is no dust coming in the case in the first place (thanks to the dust filters mounted on the front fans) and secondly; if there IS dust in the case it gets taken out of the case :).

If you are wondering if all these fans will make this case sound like a Boeiing 747 preparing for take-off, then let me reassure you this is not the case at all! The ADDA fans are very quiet and still manage to generate a decent airflow. If you want to move a LOT of air, noone is stopping you to replace the fans with more powerful, but also noisier, Sunon or Y.S. Tech fans.

The two front fans come with some sort of BayBus that lets you switch the fans in three modes: LOW – MEDIUM – HIGH. Yeppers … you guessed it. With a small switch you can make your fans run faster or slower depending on your needs. This comes in handy when you want to leave your computer on while you sleep or when it’s a hot summer day and you need more air in your case to keep it stable. The only downside on this gadget is that you have to remove the front cover in order to be able to reach the switch. Luckily the front bezel comes of real easy (without tools).

Also note that the fans are equiped with fingerguards on the inside of the case to prevent power cables getting trapped in there or even to prevent curious fingers from being cut off!

Enough talking about cooling … let’s see what kind of expansion room the PC20 offers …

Expansion Room

Aaah expansion room … the second most imporant feature on a case! Now that we have a good looking, well cooled case we still need one thing to make us happy and that is space, a lot of S P A C E.
Lately most people own a cd-rom, cd-(re)writer, a LiveDrive!, 2 hard drives in a RAID setup and lets not forget the 3.5′ floppy drive and maybe even an internal Iomega Zip drive. With all this hardware in our box we need a lot of room, and if possible have some space left for future upgrades. With demands like this most people will buy themselves a full tower which is not very handy to carry along with you to LAN parties.

Again the PC20 manages to show its power by supplying us with 4 external 5.25′ expansion bays, 3 external 3.5” bays and another 3 internal 3.5′ bays. With my setup (the one I described above) I still had room left for one external 5.25′ device and two internal 3.5′ devices or one internal 3.5′ device and one external 3.5′ device.
The 3 internal 3.5′ bays are situated in some sort of rack which sits right behind the two 80mm in the front. This is very good to cool those 10k SCSI hard drives because the fresh air will flow directly over them! And because of the space that remains between the drives enough air can get through and reach the other hardware!!

The test …

Is there a better way to test a computer case then by building a computer out of it? No! So that’s exactely what I did with the PC20. Here is all the hardware I installed in it:

- Abit KT7A RAID motherboard
- AMD Duron 600 @ 1GHz / 1.85v processor
- 3 x 128MB PC133 CAS2 Crucial RAM
- Hercules Geforce GTS Ultra
- Creative Soundblaster Live! Platinum with LiveDrive!
- LAN card
- AOpen 52x cd-rom
- Plextor 16/10/40x cd-rewriter
- 2 x 30GB IBM DeskStar drives UDMA100 7200rpm in RAID0 setup
- 3.5′ Floppy drive (blah!)

Normally I don’t enjoy taking my computer apart to test a new case, but for the first time I did not mind :). I quickly located my screwdriver to take out all the cards, hdd’s, … from my previous case (Coolerguys Cyclone 500). To install all the goodies in the PC20, no tools are needed (I know I said that already … just wanted to make sure you got it ;)) because everything is secured with thumbscrews!! I mean everything besides the mobo, cd drives and hard drives. This makes life a lot easier because opening the case and swapping a videocard is a piece of cake now :). Please note that the sides of the Lian Li are removable and of course the case comes with a removable motherboard tray. This last feature is a very welcome one because you no longer have to ‘dig’ your way into the case to install the mobo and stuff. You just take the tray, install your mobo, cpu, ram, cards, … and when you’re done just slide it back in and your set :).

One of the things I don’t like to do when installing a new mobo (or when you take the tray out of your case) is reconnecting all those small cables to make the hdd LED, power LED, power button, reset switch, … work! I really hate that because I never use a motherboard long enough to memorize the settings and it is a real pain in the butt to have to look for that manual … Again Lian Li has the answer to our problem! They have a ‘click’ system, which lets you disconnect the entire cable containing all the connectors. That way the cables stay attached to the motherboard when you take the tray out, and when you reinsert it you just click the cable to the other cable and you’re set! Really love this feature …

A Little More About The Looks …

A Lian Li makes the crowd goes ‘Whoaaa’. That’s my way to describe the Lian Li PC20 case. You know the look people give you when you drive by in that new Ferrari 360 Modena in Italy Red? Well that’s the look you’ll get when you’re kicking butt at your local fraging party! Some will be jeaulous (who wouldn’t?) and ignore it, others will congratulate with the best looking case around. But that’s life heh?

Apart from the fact that the entire case has a silver color, the power and reset button are made in chrome (at least they look like that) which adds a real nice touch to the PC20. It makes you wanna push them (which resulted in me rebooting my machine without reason ;p). At the bottom front there is also a case badge from Lian Li to make sure everyone sees the brand. I wish they left this empty so we could put our own case badge there …

Ok We Covered All The Good Stuff … Are There Any Remarks?

Noone is perfect (apart from myself :p), and the PC20 ain’t perfect either. For starters the case comes without a power supply. I think this is a shame because the people at Lian Li thought about everything, but they forgot one of the most important parts of a computer?
The second thing that caught my attention is the small but sometimes annoying matter with the fan speed switch: in order to change it you have to remove the front bezel.

Another remark is the rear fan: it comes with a 3 pin power header, which needs to be connected to the motherboard. If you don’t have a connector left or it is too far away, then you will need an extra 3 -> 4 pin convertor cable to connect this fan directly to the P/S.

Conclusion

The final verdict … Lian Li sure did a hell of a job when they designed the PC20, and apart from the few remarks I made, this case seems to be the perfect case. It features a lot of expansion possibilities and has decent cooling arrangements. Next to that the case looks really good and if that ain’t enough, please remind yourself that this case has been built out of aluminium which makes it very light. If the case is not special enough it can also be modded with plexi windows and neon light to make it even better looking!! If you need a case with even more expansion possibilities, then you should take a look at the PC70 Lian Li case, which is pretty much the same case as the PC20 but with more expansion slots, more cooling and also a bigger price tag ;). For all this godness you are paying a premium price of $216, which is not little. But when you want the best you have to pay for the best …