Installation:
Test Rig:
- Mother Board: Gigabyte H55-USB3
- Power Supply: OCZ Modxstream 700 watt Modular
- GPU: Sparkle GTX480+
- OS Drive: Kingston SSDNow V100 128Gb
- Secondary: OCZ Agility 2 60 Gb
Installing the motherboard was very easy. All of the wholes were drilled well and did not provide any issue. I didn’t even have to pound the IO panel into place like I have had to sometimes in the past. Looking at the size of the case I was a little weary of fitting my graphics card into the space, but it went in without issue. There was even enough room to route the cables around the back of it. This was a very smooth process until I tried to install the center bar.
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You can see from the pictures here, that the center bar is VERY close to my graphics card, in fact once the bar is screwed in it is preventing the removal of the power plugs from the card. Although it is very close, they are not touching. On a plus side the center bar is aluminum and will conduct heat so it may be acting as a additional heat sink. This is a very unique problem that is only going to happen with a Mini-ITX board and a full size graphics card with heat pipes, but it is still something to note.
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The rest of the system went together without an issue. I installed the second solid state drive in the 3.5 hard drive caddy for ease of cabling. One feature I liked is the unoccupied space created by the optical drive and the power supply is very nice for cable management. The cables coming out of the power supply are not stressed or strained, and the space would allow you to use a significantly larger power supply.
Conclusion:
Lian-Li has produced another high quality case. There were a couple close calls with the video card, but as i mentioned, they exist only in the unique scenario of a m-ITX motherboard and a full size graphics card. The case is remarkably quiet, and even with the solid aluminum body, there is no audible vibration. The system is very spacious but still maintains a small form. I was able to put a very full bodies graphics card in the system with room to spare. The two fans do a good job of keeping the system cool and there are definite cooling expansion options.
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