Lian Li shows radical new case design
Both cases feature an innovative hard disk mounting mechanism
Both cases are made out of Lian Li’s customary aluminium, but feature some truly innovative internal design elements.
The PC-90, for example, mounts its hard disks vertically along the right-hand side of the case, a mechanism that when fully loaded with hard disks creates a bizarre looking wall of storage.
Lian Li claims that mounting the disks in such a way frees up room at the front of the case where the disks would classically be mounted. This allows Lian Li to either place more fans at the front of the case, or to shrink the size of the case.
On the down side though, mounting the disks in this way essentially blocks off access to the rest of the PC meaning you’ll need to remove your disks every time you needed to fiddle with your components. We also can’t help thinking that mounting the disks in such a way is a cable routeing nightmare waiting to happen. We’ll wait until we see the PC-90 in our labs before making any firm judgements, however.
Lian Li also showed us the PC-100, which features an innovative back-to-front design whereby cold air is drawn in at the rear of the case and hot air exhausted out the front. Not only this, but the motherboard is also mounted back to front, meaning its rear I/O panel is actually located at the front of the case.
To accommodate this design Lian Li has had to place routeing holes for things such the DVI cable you can see in the pictures. There's also a number of small holes around the aluminium fascia of the case, which unfortunately we didn’t get a picture of (though it’s similar to that of the PC-90), for things such as mouse and keyboard wires to pass through.
Such a design is obviously a radical departure from what we’re used to seeing from Lian Li, which should be applauded for attempting something new. Whether the design actually offers any thermal benefits remains to be seen.
Both cases are still in the development phase but should be hitting the market later this year if all goes to plan, Lian Li said.
Do you fancy a mental mirrored case, or do you think the design will fall flat? Let us know your thoughts in the forum.
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Discuss in the forums ReplyIt's not aged perfectly - heatpipes aren't really designed to work inverted - but in theory I'm interested in weird design revisions...
Or am I missing something.
Glad to see Lian Li are still being as mad as ever, though.
The real downside is the heat from the graphics card in my opinion.
Same here too, though personally I quite like the idea. What would make it perfect imo would be to have all the SATA cables embedded or even a backplane, so you actually connect your SATA cables at the bottom/bottom/side etc all in one clump rather than having lots trailing around.
Or even a custom case cable from the bottom etc to get to the ports and then split so all you get is one nice albeit thick cable to route not 6/8.
Exactly what I was thinking, hinged door = ease of access & lots of space
Agree on the HDDs being mounted behind the mobo tray too - much cleaner look and more room for a WC loop inside the case.
I love my Lian Li V1200 Plus - a spot of dremelling easily made room for a couple of 240 rads inside.
I can understand reversing the fan flow. my case at work and at home are under the desk, exhausting the hot air out the front would give better cooling instead of heating up the area under the desk.
Lian-Li's marketing department need a slap though, 6 identical HDD's would make it look a lot more impressive than just a bunch of random drives.
And why hasn't anyone before put HDD's in the base of a pc? how many cases have empty space in the bottom. seems logical (or is that a big oversight by me?)
although i guess with a little bit of playing you could potentially replace 1 or 2 of the hard drives at the bottom with 120mm low speed intake fans and have a vent/s at the top of the case to get some air flow over the drives
also wild stab in the dark but i guess the higher concentration/build up of dust at the bottom of a case and mechanical drives dont mix well in the long run
At least Silverstone had a GOOD idea with the FT02...
If it's cooling related maybe the crazy rotation is solely dictated by having the usual rear exhaust used as an intake, straight into the cpu cooler. Underdesk air, behind the pc, is usually considered hot and dusty so that's probably why the rotation.
My v1200 is the same, the heatpipes are struggling while inverted. I've always wished the case weren't inverted.
And what is the point of having the back of the board on the front ? There is none, really. They just have to come up with some crazy stuff when they seen the Silverstone rotated layout with the back of the board at top :).
(yes, i'm a bit sarcastic).
Gotta agree really though even though the idea of them doing something now what I done 4 years ago in an infinitely more ghetto look is a funny thing but really Lian-Li have the resources to make it work excellent I think if they use sata backplanes effectively with some nifty wire work to keep it all tidy, those pictures must be in prototype stage I'd expect, really is like a blast from the past :D, was feeling kinda down & this article really cheered me up .
Now those disks will be mounted against side panel, so about what cooling we talking here?
Not impressed at all.
Hard drive cooling is overrated.
Exhaust the hot air into the room, where the majority of air conditioning is concentrated? You'll never get enough cool air fron the wall side of the case. The hot air, exhausting directly into your expensively air conditioned room will raise your A/C costs. I bet you'll really feel cool with all that hot air blowing out the front and rising up to the vicinity of your face.
Block access to your internals with a "wall of hdd's?" That's really bright! Hinge the wall of hdd's? Where are you going to bunch up the extended sata and power cables? Right up against your cpu heatsink & fans? Create a snakes pit of worthless insulation? Fried cpu's on toasted mobo's anyone?
Make the cases smaller? That's exactly what LianLi is after. Cheapen their costs to manufacture that will never, ever be passed on to you.
Smaller cases tend to be extremely hard to cool. I have just switched over to all full tower cases because of this, plus the much easier access to the internals. I've also switched over to watercooling. Absolutely impossible with these completely retarded concepts.
LianLi, you're engineering staff really needs to quit guzzling those gallons of sake' they appear to be consuming all day long at an ever increasing rate. Your "concepts" have been going straight down the crapper ever since you were bitten by the spider that made you hallucinate the most stupid, ugliest case(?) I have ever seen. Your spider m-atx platform. Do yourselves a favor and sell out to Chenbro before you lose ALL of your money and pride.
This doesn't make any sense. Hot air rises whether it starts its journey under your desk or in front of the pc doesn't make any different to your AC system.
The only difference would be if you were stupid enough to sit in front of the exhaust AND crank the AC up because you're feeling hot sitting in a hot spot.
Particularly in the the 3rd picture of the P90 and the 2nd picture of the P100, they just look appalling with those cables all over the place.
Anyway, now I've moaned about the cables... the actual layout of the case just doesn't look right with me. It's slightly interesting, but many of us like to add a window to our cases and having a wall of HDDs showing through is really going to kill off that idea. :\
Could you imagine doing a water-cooled setup just to cover it all up with that wall?
I'd guess by the grommeted holes that they intended to support water-cooling, so I would have thought that they would automatically assumed that people would like to see their intricate loop routing.
I'd agree with others that putting the drives behind the MB tray would be a better idea, although that could gimp cable management somewhat (unless perhaps they extend the back back panel out a little further to accommodate the space required for drives and cables).
Lian Li have done one of my pet hates in these cases as well... top-mounted PSUs.
I don't mind them at the top if the case has some unique exterior design that makes good use of it, but for something in a very plain box style case I just can't seem to force myself to like the power supply at the top of the case.
I really hope these cases get some serious alteration before getting sent to retailers.
They just don't look well thought out from those images.
Next to the expansion slots on most cases is a lot of unused space when a big fan is expanding the width, they could make those internal panels so they simply unscrew & swing out to allow access to the system, it will require some form of anti vibration & custom sata backplanes with cables routed through the internal panel with flex so it can function correct, I have faith they can crack doing this right & look forward to seeing it happen, I think it would be quite awesome, a good compact air cooled full atx case, if I hadn't come so far with modding I'd be very interested in buying 1.
I know what they need to do to make it work excellent & without hassle & they are not far off the mark with what I see, I done a very ghetto version of this either 4 or 5 years ago when I started modding for performance, then the x2000 case came along with the 3 seperated sections which with the price of I think £300+ convinced me to try making my own like that :).
Anyway I'm glad to see an old idea I tried finally come to a quality case manufactuer, I know it could work especially with Lian-Li's build quality.
Many think Lian-Li cases are overated, I see them as nice simple very well made cases & perfect for modding with the plain but nice looks they usually come with, not much fun in modding a case that is full of manufactuer mods of what they think we want.
But yeah a normal window mod wouldn't be so good on this but a top front 1 could & so could the hdd panel, a good enough or brave modder could manage a cool mod on something like this :D if they implement custom sata backplanes & the right wire work, I think it's essential else I doubt people will like it much.
I'm sure they could put them behind the mobo tray but it wouldn't be optimal & the case would need to be wider.
Learn it
Anyway, the PC in the middle of my living room is like the 100 - flipped it around because the case doesn't have front panel connectors. I'll have finished the new scratch build before I get around to moving the power switch to a pci cover on the back. So lean over the table to hit the button and away we go. Not that easy to get to the ODD, but it doesn't matter - it's rare when I need the ODD on that one at all. It's got two installed, but only one hooked up - I couldn't find the blanking plate for that bay, so I just shoved an extra drive into the bay.
Like everyone else, I thought not a bad idea on the 90 when I thought the HDDs were behind the mobo. Since they're not...in the words of Dib, 'This is stupid. This is stupid stupid'. Even in that case, though, I'd be concerned about heat.
I like the look of LL cases, but they're a little rich for my blood. Nice to see the designers coming up with unusual ideas, but maybe they shouldn't make them all public.
Nice ;) lol
Yeah I understand that on the looks part & maybe they will because you could get more there too, I'd guess 1 of those long fans at the botttom with vents in the top could do it well to make it so a good enough amount of air flow gets to pass them there & make the case a little wider & bingo a great new form that other case manufaturers will kick themselves for not doing first :).
:D That's all from me on this, I'm feeling much better so I'm back to work on my own case :D.
PSU cooling is overrated. At least mine doesn't get hot at all, and has no problem sucking some warm air from the top of the case as ist's supposed to.