| Article Index |
|---|
| Lian Li PC-K8 Case Review |
| The Exterior |
| The Interior |
| Installation |
| The Tests |
| Performance Summary |
| Conclusion |
| All Pages |
Opening
Opening the case is nice and simple, but yet again, finger prints become an issue all over the side panel, hence I turned the panel over for this photo, each panel measured 1mm in thickness. Inside lies the anti-corrosion paper with a small box that contains a huge amount of goodies. Power cables and I/O cables are all neatly arranged and read to plug in.
Also included are 2 sheets of paper, one showing instructions for installing drives and everything about the case, while the other shows a variety of other Lian Li cases that are probably all completely aluminium and what you probably should have bought instead.
The Box of Goodies
Out of the box of goodies, you will find:
• A Power cable
• A Standoff screw screwdriver
• A speaker
• Standoff Screws
• Motherboard Screws
• 5.25” Drive Screws
• HDD Screws with Sound Absorbers
• 2 Cable Organisers
• 3 Cable Ties
If they could give you a screw driver for the standoff screws, I’d like to know why they couldn’t give you one for the normal screws. But regardless, this box of goodies was packed and pretty well has everything (except that screwdriver), that you could need to secure your hardware.
Removable Motherboard panel
You can really see the SECC infrastructure and surprisingly it’s thicker than normal cases, it was difficult to measure because majority of edges were rolled, but we did get a reading of about 1mm for thickness which is great for the strength of the case. The feel is vastly different from that of the aluminium outer shell.
On this side you can see the motherboard panel which is removable and this is perhaps for easier installation. Also you can see two metal prongs which come out to assist in organising your cables on this side of the panel.
Front Panel
The front panel is easy to remove, but it requires a Phillips screw driver and some time to remove 4 tiny screws, two up top, two at the bottom. One these screws are out, the front panel slides off and two plastic mounting units, one at top and other at bottom can either come off with it, or you can leave them clipped onto the case. You will need to take off this panel if you’re either planning on removing the front 140mm fan or changing the direction of the HDD bays. This panel is aluminium so remember, fingerprints will stick.
The Top
The PC-K8 has a removable top and this is perhaps good for modifying the top of the case or perhaps an easier angle to install things like the PSU. You can see here on the front the screws that hold the top onto the case.
The top holds the I/O port and cables that extend through the case. It quite obvious these cables are long enough to reach anywhere on the motherboard when installed. Also on the sides of the top piece are small metal tabs on either side; I believe these are put in to help reduce noise in the case.
The Inside
The removable motherboard area has plenty of elevation screw holes to mount ATX, Micro-ATX and ITX boards, although no elevation screws have been put in yet, but that doesn’t matter because they supplied me with the screw driver to put them in.
There are large oval holes which lead to the other side to help put cables out of the way. I will repeat that the motherboard panel is removable so as to make installing the motherboard easier, but I personally did not remove it and I apologise for not getting photos of that.
Overall there is plenty of space inside this case for the average user’s needs which is expected for all midi towers. Something interesting you can see is that the HDD bays are mounted sideways and this is possibly for either better air flow over the drives or maybe for improved cable management. Oh and I actually did find aluminium is part of the internal infrastructure and this does significantly add to the hybrid design of this case, It’s in the picture! (A slight hint of sarcasm there)
The PSU
Already installed in the case is a 450Watt generic PSU which houses a single 120mm fan at its base hance this PSU is a “noise killer” using less rpm on the large fan to keep the gear quiet yet cool. I’m sure Lian Li had the best intentions in mind to get users up and running as soon as possible with this PSU, but it has 2 really serious issues. The case was meant for gamers and hence these issues would affect gamers/enthusiasts more than a normal person who just needs a computer case.
Firstly, it’s a 450W PSU, and for consistent gaming that amount of power would only just barely be alright for a lot of modern video cards but stick in two video cards with SLI and presto! All your hardware will fight over a power shortage.
And Secondly, this PSU has 4 x 4pin peripheral (Molex), 1 x SATA, 1 x 20+4pin main ATX, 1 x 4pin ATX and a floppy drive power cable and that’s it! Where’s the 8pin PCI-Express power cable for my video cards? Well bad news, this PSU is a bit out of date, end of life and it’s earns a thumbs down from gamers, lacking the 8pin PCI-Ex power cable, I’m not sure Lian Li were really aiming this case for gamers or not.
This PSU was not meant for graphically demanding tasks and is too out of date for most modern video cards, so if you’re hardware is geared for gaming, this case is starting to look bad, it’d be cheaper to find a case without a PSU and buy a proper power supply for your needs. I’d say this case with PSU is really here for moderate computer users who have general work and home use in mind.
If however you’re adamant about getting this case and changing the PSU well here’s the empty bay with a Swiss cheese look but elevating the PSU slightly above it. The existing PSU dimensions were: 150mm (W) x 140mm (L) x 85mm (H).
Drive Bays
The PC-K8 mounts 4 external 5.25” drives, the top two have added clips that help lock in drives quickly and hold them in place for adding extra screws.
Just above the two upper drives is the power and reset switches that connect to the top of the case lid.
The 5.25” drives are surrounded on the far side with the small metal sound absorbers to help dampen the sound of the media drives.
As we go lower, we find the other two 5.25” drives which lack the plastic clip and sound absorbers, but I imagine that is because not all devices would fit into those clips and not all devices are as noisy as a DVD drive. After all 5.25” bays is the 3.5” bay which has an aluminium bracket to mount a floppy drive or 3.5” device. This can be removed to mount the 3.5” drive and also has its own small front panel attached.
The HDD Bays
In a neat little separate bay are the slots for 4 3.5” Hard disk drives. This bay came installed with hard drives parallel to the to the front 140mm fan, possibly to get more surface area cooled from the fan, but this unit can be removed and refitted so that HDDs face the front with cable ends pointing to the motherboard.
Now remember the small screws underneath the case? Well it’s here that 4 of them are holding onto the HDD bays.
There is also one screw in the front of the case, so it requires the front panel off.
Once all 5 screws are removed, then the bay is free to move around.
I mounted the HDD bay so that they would all face forward, you’ll only be able to use the 4 bottom screws, there wasn’t a place to mount the side screw which connected to the front of the case.
You can see the strange curved candy cane shape on the HDD bays, but there is a reason and it’s to make installation of the HDDs easier and also to add to the noise reduction of the case.
Fans
This case has a 140mm intake fan at the lower front and a 120mm at the back for exhaust. The front one is also a blue LED fan to add some character to the case when it is switched on. Both move a good amount of air making speeds of 1000rpm and 1200rpm respectively; there is no additional areas to mount extra fans unfortunately.
