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Lian Li Xbox 360 case is just weeks away
Author: Richard SwinburnePublished: 5th June 2008
The Lian Li 360 case is larger in size and requires you voiding the warranty of your Xbox, however we still recon it'll be worth it.
The case should offer extra air cooling in addition to a quieter 120mm fan – you can choose what you want to run it at. The whole front is a grill to let the air in, so you’ll also be able to see the controller connectivity lights clearly too – although we do still wonder about the access to the little buttons that eject the drive and resync the wireless controllers. Quick swapping the SATA is also out of the question – you’ll have to whip your hard drive right out of its plastic casing: this is, after all, the full daddy of recasing.
Lian Li has also made some improvements to the cost too – it doesn’t think people will be going in and out very often, so it has substituted things like the more expensive thumbscrews for flush ones and made the side panels just a plain sheet of aluminium instead.
If you want something more normal though, then how about the sexy PC-X500? Just like the X2000 we saw at CeBIT this case is taller than it is wide, with everything bar the motherboard and its cards moved up in a separate compartment, however the X500 is also more of a normal size of 23x38x57cm rather than 23x43x67cm.
In addition to the included three speed fan controller there are 2x120mm fans in the front, unhindered by drive bays; your graphics cards now get the maximum cooling possible. There’s also a 120mm in the rear and one up above by the hard drive bays to keep them cool as well.
The styling of the X500 is quite simply phenomenal – you couldn’t get much cleaner, neater and professional, however the “anti-door” people will no doubt still complain.
Away from just cases and into other things: Lian Li has some new hard drive mounts that also encase the drive more securely and mean that now it is tool-less and very easy to pop a drive in or out.
In addition this is the best fanbus display we’ve seen yet – the TR5 has a very wide viewing angle meaning it’s actually useful. It doesn’t feature functionally as diverse as other controllers, but it will still handle four fans, four thermal sensors and allow auto/manual/off mode changes. It will be sold separately or possibly bundled with some models, although we don’t have a price yet.
Finally some cases you want (yeah, I’ve read your complaints in my other news posts!), or are these features or cases missing something you want? Let us know your thoughts, in the forums.
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Comments (21)Stats: 0.061 seconds
It's not worth this Rolls Royce case and that new Thermalright cooler a site spied for it. Such a shame, I guess it's what it takes for consoles to be as cheap as they are.
Eh I figured that would be totally obvious, the 360 has and awful thermal design, and the cramped case is part of the overall problem. I'm very tempted to buy this actually, my 2nd 360 is starting to freeze up so I think its going to die again this summer. I've thought quite a bit about modding my case for bigger fans etc but a kit like this would make it so convenient to do. Besides the heat issues with the 360 case its also loud as all hell, though that's mostly the DVD drive but this case would at least cut out the fan noise which is still quite loud.
It should prove that, given the proper amount of cooling, rrod's can be avoided.
Well part of the high failure rate is due to thermal issues. I'd put money on a group of new 360s in these having a lower failure rate than standard 360s in equal conditions.
Word on price? And will they do something to internalize the giant power brick so I can just run a standard cord to an outlet, or will I have to continue dealing with that honking thing and its inflexible cable ruining everything?
That and a blu-ray drive would make it an instant win, even without blu-ray i would still run out and order it.
Sam
and a 1TB hdd... afterall that thing ends up in the living room:D
About the only thing i think Sony got right about the PS3 was not locking down the hard drives into 'only MS-branded HDD's work' idea... surely the pictured 3.5" HDD wouldn't work?
I'd be sorely tempted by a case such as those if it reduced the fan/drive noise a fair bit...
Heres a potential idea for a 360 mod: set the DVD drive with an add-in hefty RAM caching system with cheap DDR2 ram sticks :)
As the constant loading times is the main thing that makes me prefer PC gaming over consoles
No. It's large because it's the width of the DVD drive, and it also adds space for a 120mm fan in the back and another in the front.
I forgot to mention - LiLi are working with CoolIT to provide a specific watercooling kit with it so we'll talk to the CoolIT guys about doing them both together for review :)
I thought MS were happy to replace broken xbox's?
http://www.germes-online.com/direct/dbimage/50353472/Plastic_Shopping_Basket.jpg