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Limp Gawd
- Joined
- Oct 23, 2008
- Messages
- 340
So I decided to go out on a limb and purchase one of these bad boys with the hope of improved temps and a shiny new case to stare at each and every day. I saw only one review by ocaholic (received a gold award) and thought I could add my two cents with a quick and basic review.
Pros:
When I unboxed it the case was aesthetically very pleasing, to me anyway. I thought this case looked pretty slick and the super light weight of it was something I had not come across before. It was half the weight of my Raven. The exterior looked great with that brushed aluminum finish and the interior had a nice matte black coat, as opposed to the aluminum finish in the regular PC-J60. The top of the case sported the option to add x3 120mm fans and it had a nifty removable magnetic filter to go along with it. The front had the same removable magnetic filter but only allowed for x2 120mm fans. Not much else really stood out for on the plus side.
Cons:
The first thing I noticed on this was the lack of cable management options on the back of the case. There was absolutely nothing to tie the cables down to back on the back side of the mobo tray, even though the Lian Li demo video for it says there are. The video also shows the ability to mount an HDD to back side of the mobo tray. My case did not have any such mounting features for an HDD. Another hit for me was if you have a larger PSU then you would had to remove the closest hdd tray down in the bottom section. So not all PSU's are compatible if you require the use of several HDD/SSD's. I also had issue with my PSU cable length. I was using an OCZ ZX 1050 and the GPU power cable was not long enough. Luckily I still had my Enermax Revolutions 1050 PSU still laying around and got that one back in rotation. This may not affect everyone but definitely something to watch out for. I also felt the paint scratched off extremely easily, even the lightest touch with another metal (ie screwdriver, etc.) would leave a small nick on the finish. So there is no room for carelessness when installing components here. Finally, and probably the most problematic thing for me were the case standoffs for the motherboard installation. There are 9 already pre-installed in the case and they all lined up perfectly with my motherboard. I used the black screws that came with the case and each and every single one only went in half way. This left the motherboard very loose and I could move it a couple of mm, since it was not secured down all of the way. I have never had this issue before in all of the cases I have owned (9 and counting.) So I thought to try giving it a little more force to see if they screws would go down any further. I ended up stripping 7 of the 9 screws and 2 of them would not even go back in, as the thread completely fell out. It landed right on my table (I should have taken pics of it.) I thought this may be a result of the thin aluminum construction of the case. Again, this is something that I have never had happen to me in the past, so I am not sure what to think on this one. Either I don't know how to install a mobo or this was a huge over sight on Lian Li and they botched this up pretty bad.
Overall grade C-
I was only able to snap a few pics of the case by itself. I wish I had taken more pictures but there was nothing but frustration right from the start with this one. Taking more pics didn't even cro ss my mind... Other than the sleek exterior of this case I simply can not find any reason for me to recommend this to anyone. The red doesn't even look red, it is more of a pinkish red, which is also mentioned in the ocaholic review. To top it off, my overall case temps went up 3-5C when compared my Silverstone Raven. All in all I was hoping this would be a nice upgrade from my RV02B but I was left completely unimpressed and will be returning this case as quickly as possible.
Pros:
When I unboxed it the case was aesthetically very pleasing, to me anyway. I thought this case looked pretty slick and the super light weight of it was something I had not come across before. It was half the weight of my Raven. The exterior looked great with that brushed aluminum finish and the interior had a nice matte black coat, as opposed to the aluminum finish in the regular PC-J60. The top of the case sported the option to add x3 120mm fans and it had a nifty removable magnetic filter to go along with it. The front had the same removable magnetic filter but only allowed for x2 120mm fans. Not much else really stood out for on the plus side.
Cons:
The first thing I noticed on this was the lack of cable management options on the back of the case. There was absolutely nothing to tie the cables down to back on the back side of the mobo tray, even though the Lian Li demo video for it says there are. The video also shows the ability to mount an HDD to back side of the mobo tray. My case did not have any such mounting features for an HDD. Another hit for me was if you have a larger PSU then you would had to remove the closest hdd tray down in the bottom section. So not all PSU's are compatible if you require the use of several HDD/SSD's. I also had issue with my PSU cable length. I was using an OCZ ZX 1050 and the GPU power cable was not long enough. Luckily I still had my Enermax Revolutions 1050 PSU still laying around and got that one back in rotation. This may not affect everyone but definitely something to watch out for. I also felt the paint scratched off extremely easily, even the lightest touch with another metal (ie screwdriver, etc.) would leave a small nick on the finish. So there is no room for carelessness when installing components here. Finally, and probably the most problematic thing for me were the case standoffs for the motherboard installation. There are 9 already pre-installed in the case and they all lined up perfectly with my motherboard. I used the black screws that came with the case and each and every single one only went in half way. This left the motherboard very loose and I could move it a couple of mm, since it was not secured down all of the way. I have never had this issue before in all of the cases I have owned (9 and counting.) So I thought to try giving it a little more force to see if they screws would go down any further. I ended up stripping 7 of the 9 screws and 2 of them would not even go back in, as the thread completely fell out. It landed right on my table (I should have taken pics of it.) I thought this may be a result of the thin aluminum construction of the case. Again, this is something that I have never had happen to me in the past, so I am not sure what to think on this one. Either I don't know how to install a mobo or this was a huge over sight on Lian Li and they botched this up pretty bad.
Overall grade C-
I was only able to snap a few pics of the case by itself. I wish I had taken more pictures but there was nothing but frustration right from the start with this one. Taking more pics didn't even cro ss my mind... Other than the sleek exterior of this case I simply can not find any reason for me to recommend this to anyone. The red doesn't even look red, it is more of a pinkish red, which is also mentioned in the ocaholic review. To top it off, my overall case temps went up 3-5C when compared my Silverstone Raven. All in all I was hoping this would be a nice upgrade from my RV02B but I was left completely unimpressed and will be returning this case as quickly as possible.
