KitGuru KitGuru.net – Tech News | Hardware News | Hardware Reviews | IOS | Mobile | Gaming | Graphics Cards
The first move during the installation phase is to remove the aluminum beam from the inside of the case. There are four screws holding this in place. This can be returned when the system is complete, although I have to be honest, once I remove this, it never goes back in. If you are the kind of person who builds a system once and never touches the insides again, then it is a good idea to put this back.
The power supply rests on the raised platform at the bottom of the case. There are two rubber lined support strips here to reduce vibration noise.
We love the Lian Li power supply fitting procedure. They supply a locking bracket which attaches to the backplane of the case. With this in place Lian Li say you don't need to attach the four mounting screws at the rear of the case, unless you move the system regularly, such as for LAN events. We recommend you bolt it in anyway, as the procedure only takes a few minutes. This concept is ideal however for a reviewer or developer who makes frequent changes to a system build.
The PC-Z70 front panel can be removed by simply tugging on the sides. Each of the hot swappable drive bays is protected by a locking mechanism, which is released by thumbscrews. This were in place rather tightly, so we removed them with a screwdriver.
The internal bar mechanism can be removed with the supplied keys.
The case supports both 3.5 inch and 2.5 inch drives. Lian Li include a plethora of plastic mounting brackets which attach to the side of each of the drives. The hard drives can then slide into place and lock into the rear data PCB on each of the drive bays.
2.5 inch drives can be installed directly into a smaller bay at the bottom of the case as shown above. At Kitguru, we don't use internal optical drives any more, prefering to rely on a USB 2.0 powered bluray drive, or USB drive media for application installs. The installation procedure for 5.25 inch products is the same however.
The PC-Z70 case has literally acres of room inside for building a system.
Quite often we feel that many case manufacturers overlook routing support. This time however Lian Li have gotten it spot on – there are rubber protected routing holes scattered across the outer edges of the ATX motherboard area, meaning that all cables can be fed in from the back without a problem.
Building a system in this case was as painfree as we have experienced, and just as impressive as the X2000F chassis we reviewed in March. The image above highlights the potential for cable routing, although the molex connectors would need to be moved to the rear of the motherboard tray to clean up the overall appearance.
And they do it again. I think Zardon likes Lian Li 🙂
Yeah thats quite stunning. I miss the black interior of the X2000F, but this one is almost affordable !
Once I persuade the missus, im ditching my IN WIN bargain from last year 🙂
As much as the insides are great, they come at great cost. Silverstone can be expensive too. I tend to opt for Coolermaster as they look great and hover around the 100 mark.
Coolermaster arent bad I agree. same with thermaltake, although coolermaster are better.
I really do like some of the bitfenix design ideas, but their engineering quality is terrible. Im one of the 10 people who bought a collossus and the thing has fallen apart. check out my thread on the OCUK forums.
its a false economy bying a budget case
Thermaltake do nice Armor cases, they aren’t like this lian li, but they are like 1/5 the price and do ok for a build for home.
For £260 I could get a new CPU and some momory. Lian Li are way ahead of Bitfenix, thermaltake or coolermaster for cases. I prefer Silverstone however.
I dont know why silverstone get such a good name,. I saw the kitguru review of the Raven 03 and thought you guys oversold it. its ugly as sin. this is much nicer although the cost is higher.
Bitfenix are exciting, but they have a lot of work ahead of them IMO. they are concentrating on the secondary aspects of a case, like glowing lights and colour changing, rather than working cooling, for example 🙂
dear sir, i was highly impressed after viewing review, i would like your suggestion, iam having X8DTG-QF, MO BO dual processor from super micron its size is 13.2″x 15.2″ and says EATX, will this chassis support this board, iam already having with me 2nos, of xeon x5650 and 5000 quadro. but system chassis is very expensive, will i have to make any modifications in this or the mo bo will fit in strait in . please suggest a PSU up to 1000w to 1200w, as iam a freelance designer, please suggest . Awiting for your reply at the earliest
thanking you
Regards adi mehta.