Lian Li all brushed aluminum cases

There was also a Japanese manufacturer called Windy that made the same style of non-painted all brushed aluminum cases. And in a variety of different colors. Very very solid strong construction. Made to last a lifetime.
Looks like they're out of business. The last lian-li I bought has been much easier for installation and has a lot of benefits for things like multiple SSDs, no more optical drive space, etc, but the quality isn't nearly the same.

Found some used cases in good condition though:

https://buyee.jp/item/yahoo/auction/k558895935?conversionType=search_suggest
https://buyee.jp/item/yahoo/auction/s831764206?conversionType=search_suggest
https://buyee.jp/item/yahoo/auction/s830221743?conversionType=search_suggest
 
Looks like they're out of business. The last lian-li I bought has been much easier for installation and has a lot of benefits for things like multiple SSDs, no more optical drive space, etc, but the quality isn't nearly the same.

Found some used cases in good condition though:

https://buyee.jp/item/yahoo/auction/k558895935?conversionType=search_suggest
https://buyee.jp/item/yahoo/auction/s831764206?conversionType=search_suggest
https://buyee.jp/item/yahoo/auction/s830221743?conversionType=search_suggest

No optical drive bay is a deal breaker for me. I use my computer to watch my DVD and Blu-ray collection. I'm a videophile and as much as streaming movies is the mainstream modern way to watch films, no current streaming service can touch the quality of a physical Blu-ray or UHD Blu-ray.
Resolution is always the attribute studios love to use in marketing. But the dirty truth is that bitrate is just as, if not more important.
 
We are not producing these cases like we used to also. I believe the decline came in stages, higher costs aside, aluminum cases started losing their appeal in the mainstream when cases with plastic front panel was capable of mimicking brushed metal about 10-12 years ago. Then the focus for high end cases shifted toward extra features (rubber grommets, cable management, fan controller, etc...) and liquid cooler accommodation became a big thing over premium material choice. Finally in more recent years, tempered glass, RGB, and mesh front for airflow took center stage for must-have features. Aluminum is now viewed as something that is nice to have on the side, but not crucial in most user's purchasing decision.
Funny that; was just looking at the fara h1m and am giving it a pass mostly due to the plastic-fantastic front panel design.

I'm looking for something like the sg03 (looks&build quality) with some more space for a modern cpu tower cooler.
 
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Here's mine, and yeah, it also needs cable management. I just chucked all of them in and test booted it. I'll re-do this machine some time and give it to my father who is on an AMD APU.

IMG20210810152301.jpg


IMG20210810152500.jpg
 
There was also a Japanese manufacturer called Windy that made the same style of non-painted all brushed aluminum cases. And in a variety of different colors. Very very solid strong construction. Made to last a lifetime.
I picked up one of those off of yahoo auctions a few years ago. BNIB the box. Still haven't built it yet. It is a pretty case.
 
I have the boat case (Odyssey) from them. Picked up for $140, Microcenter close out. I did a HTPC build off an 8086K and lightning killed the assrocky board that was in there. Not sure what to put in it now. It's interesting for sure. I did like their earlier cases, very niche market. I never did get a Windy but my SR-2 lives in a giant Mountain Mods box. Did Caselabs go belly up? They made some interesting ones too.
 
There is still a market from them, like the Thermaltake A series. But they are Thermaltake cases with really shitty air flow.
 
I still use all of my old Lian Li cases. 100% aluminum is something I can't let go. I have a PC-D600WB, PC-A61B, PC-G70B, and PC-V2000B. I can't see myself retiring any of them any time soon. There is nothing on the market even close now. I have never had a case that had plastic parts and I don't want to start now. It's a bummer that stuff like this isn't available anymore. I will just have to maintain these cases forever.
 
I still use all of my old Lian Li cases. 100% aluminum is something I can't let go. I have a PC-D600WB, PC-A61B, PC-G70B, and PC-V2000B. I can't see myself retiring any of them any time soon. There is nothing on the market even close now. I have never had a case that had plastic parts and I don't want to start now. It's a bummer that stuff like this isn't available anymore. I will just have to maintain these cases forever.
Oh, how I lusted after that d600 case. I ended up going with the silverstone ft-02 instead and haven't changed cases since
 
Oh, how I lusted after that d600 case. I ended up going with the silverstone ft-02 instead and haven't changed cases since

I finally pulled the trigger on a D600 for my two PCs in one case build. Been a great case to build in.
 
Assuming you just mean the case and not the whole thing? I bought the case from https://www.overclockers.co.uk/ back in 2018 for about $350.
Yes, I meant just the case. I was thinking that you just made the purchase and I haven't seen one for sale recently, not that I've been looking, and thought you might have spent an entire computer budget on that case.
 
Yes, I meant just the case. I was thinking that you just made the purchase and I haven't seen one for sale recently, not that I've been looking, and thought you might have spent an entire computer budget on that case.
Definitely a hard case to source, even in 2018. I was pretty "happy" to pay $350 for it.....
 
With caselabs gone and lian li not making these types of cases anymore, the options for a double wide case are super limited.
 
Nice topic haha

In 20 years i bought all these models and i still keep them: PC-Q07 , PC-Q11 , PC-V351B , and the one i like the most is: PC-A05FN

My first lianli product was from around year 2000, was a mousepad that belive it or not, i still have it. and it is really small mousepad made in the era when the mouse had a ball in it. It is very small practically useless because you move the mouse a little bit and you are out, thats why i kept it brand new.

It has been really hard to get replacement parts, none of the shops that has them appears to be in business. i even emailed Silver PCs and there was no response, also their eshop fails to launch paypal. If anyone is in california please give them a call to see if they are still alive.

Another case i have and i like it a lot is the thermaltake xaser III and thermaltake xaser lanfire (most people hate them but i love them)

pad.jpg
 
That Silver PCs website is such a tease! I wish I still had my Lian Li silver case it was so so gorgeous. I sold it to my Mom 15 years ago not realizing that they were the last of their kind.

I did manage to find one solid silver matx case from Jonsbo but it requires a low profile CPU cooler and I'm just not feeling buying a super specific cooler and a matx motherboard for it right now.
 
I still have quite a few in my collection. I wish they would bring them back. They were top quality, and the whole case acted as a 'heatsink' with the aluminum. Hopefully the trend come back around.
 
oh man, I didn't realize these aluminum brushed Lian-Li cases are more or less not being made anymore? bummer.. I have always liked these things. I have two of these Gigabyte Triton 180 cases that have a similar (black) esthetic (case frame / side / top panels are steel.. front is aluminum.. I got these two when compusa went out of business on sale for $50 ea or so?? maybe $60 I don't remember.. Basically zero cable management options but I like the looks of these
20211030_122731.jpg
 
LianLi were my first introduction to high-end, modder-friendly PC cases back in the late 90s early 2000s. My very first watercooled PC built by a boutique shop back in the day was in one o the LianLi ATX "silent" towers with a front aluminum door and soundproofing. I can still remember buying the LianLi P80 ARMORSUIT which was a gigantic super tower that was fully aluminum, but also had a (aluminum banding, plus metal) mesh front door and 3x120 front fans mounted TO the door plus water cooling passthroughs at a time when that kind of cooling was unusual. I can also remember the Silverstone TJ07 was a similarly notorious "uber" case of its era, from a production shop. Those who were talking about Windy Soldam, the Japanese niche brands from the early 2000s they were quite neat for the time and often packed a lot of cooling and feature potential into relatively small spaces, but were ultra-expensive to import as they weren't sold in the West. I also would later buy from Corsair, which their early Obsidian cases were noteworthy for having aluminum front/external panels (though the structure internally may have been SECC) ; I also had to give them credit for offering UPGRADES for the 800D - USB 2.0 front panels and SATA 3.0gbps backplanes were replaced with USB 3.0 and SATA 6.0gbps for a modest upgrade kit; its a pity more companies don't do that...which brings me to...

Eventually, I moved to buying CaseLabs cases, which I lament being gone the most. They were expensive, but as great as LianLi and Silverstone were, CaseLabs 's ability to upgrade any particular part, buy spares, alternate forms (you want a mesh front with fan mounts? Good! Want to swap that out for plexi to display your liquid cooling? Fine! Tons of things fit in FlexMounts too!) really won my interest. They were essentially never out of date, you'd never get stuck with having to buy a whole new case because the front panel inputs were out of date and not meant to be upgraded, and everything was standardized. Atop this, they were actually fabricated, made in the USA which helped to justify the prices along with all the other great features. Them going out of business after the aluminum tarriff (at least on the individual case manufacturing; there are rumors they still do major gov't contracts and the like but its under the different name on the other side of their business) among other issues was really disappointing, as there aren't too many to follow their legacy. I'd love for System76 who makes the made in USA "Thelio" desktops, Linux focused and predicated on openness, including custom coreboot and daughterboards for IO , with aesthetic exteriors to step into the role and make a sold a la carte, high-end PC cooling/modding focused version, but for the moment they only sell complete systems.

There are definitely some great things about the cases of the past 20 years but there's also benefits in modern ones too. Ideally, it would be nice to merge them - before they closed, some of the last CaseLabs cases notably the SMA8-A had their full aluminum structure and other features, but instead of a plexi window had a full-side tempered glass option and a luminous adressible RGB midplate; had I known they were going away, I probably would have bought one or more, though my customized Mercury S8 continues to serve me well.. LianLi is still making interesting cases at times, notably their adjustable height, electro-opaque tempered glass top, aluminum exterior (though iron or steel interior) desk cases led by DK-05F. I really thought hard about buying one and they're not cheap and overall may be worth it, but I was stopped by the fact that paying $2000 for a desk + case it should be made to upgrade, mod and replace even core features, much less things like front panel inputs and outputs, and it doesn't seem it is made that way - though I admit I'm CaseLabs spoiled. Hopefully some of the best of the past and the present can be combined.
 
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I am glad i'm not the only one that laments the downfall of the high end Lian Li, Silverstone Et Al case makers. Everything now is RGB'd to the tits and designed to look good for a reddit post.
 
I am glad i'm not the only one that laments the downfall of the high end Lian Li, Silverstone Et Al case makers. Everything now is RGB'd to the tits and designed to look good for a reddit post.

I don't see myself getting rid of my Sliger Cerberus MicroATX case anytime soon. I'm not big on the gaudy RGB look either, other than maybe some low level lighting on my motherboard or RTX card.

Back when I sold off my two Lian-Li V600 aluminum cases about five years ago I had no trouble getting good money for them.
 
✅ Brushed aluminum
✅ 5.25 inch drive bays for 5 1/4 floppy drives, ODDs, and a boat load of Quantum Bigfoots
✅ 3.5 in drive bays for floppies, Zip drives, LS-120s, and card readers
✅ No otaku-weebo waifu or anime design
✅ No rainbow unicorns
✅ No mesh
✅ No window

I'll be holding on to this Lian-Li beauty for a while.
 
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I always wanted one of these classic cases. When I was ready to upgrade they didn't make them anymore...
 
View attachment 429553

✅ Brushed aluminum
✅ 5.25 inch drive bays for 5 1/4 floppy drives, ODDs, and a boat load of Quantum Bigfoots
✅ 3.5 in drive bays for floppies, Zip drives, LS-120s, and card readers
✅ No otaku-weebo waifu or anime design
✅ No rainbow unicorns
✅ No mesh
✅ No window

I'll be holding on to this Lian-Li beauty for a while.
Air? Where your cpu and gpu are going, you don't need air!
 
No optical drive bay is a deal breaker for me. I use my computer to watch my DVD and Blu-ray collection. I'm a videophile and as much as streaming movies is the mainstream modern way to watch films, no current streaming service can touch the quality of a physical Blu-ray or UHD Blu-ray.
Resolution is always the attribute studios love to use in marketing. But the dirty truth is that bitrate is just as, if not more important.
You could rip it to a computer on your network and then use a htpc or a shield tv or something similar to output it to a receiver in your home theater or whatever it is you like to watch movies at. This way it is much harder for people to damage your discs and cases. I have a couple of shield tvs, a few htpcs, and servers that feed them in places where I spend enough time. This way if my house burns or gets destroyed by a tornado it will be an inconvenience. I will view the melted disks and then get on the radio (ham or cellular) to see how clear the road is to the next good place to lurk and buy computer parts. In my office I use a 15' hdmi cable to neatly route hdmi to a receiver and it works great without the 48kHz auto resampling that shields/android do(es). It seems to only do multiples of that. This is why I retain htpcs in places where a 15' hdmi cable will not do and a 15' hdmi cable where it will.
 
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You could rip it to a computer on your network and then use a htpc or a shield tv or something similar to output it to a receiver in your home theater or whatever it is you like to watch movies at. This way it is much harder for people to damage your discs and cases. I have a couple of shield tvs, a few htpcs, and servers that feed them in places where I spend enough time. This way if my house burns or gets destroyed by a tornado it will be an inconvenience. I will view the melted disks and then get on the radio (ham or cellular) to see how clear the road is to the next good place to lurk and buy computer parts. In my office I use a 15' hdmi cable to neatly route hdmi to a receiver and it works great without the 48kHz auto resampling that shields/android do(es). It seems to only do multiples of that. This is why I retain htpcs in places where a 15' hdmi cable will not do and a 15' hdmi cable where it will.
yeah, you'll pry the DVD and Bluray out of my cold dead hands that my ripping station uses. But I do realize that the world is making having such devices difficult to obtain. But I do not use them for active "playing", maybe for testng, but mostly for ripping (and possibly archiving).
 
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