LIAN LI PC-90 The Hammer Review
Up Close: Exterior
Published: 24th April 2012 | Source: LIAN LI | Price: £155.76 |
Up Close: Exterior
Although not massive in comparison to some full size towers on the market, the PC-90 (sorry, I refuse to call it "The Hammer") is still pretty monolithic in it's appearance. The brushed Aluminium is finished in a black somewhere between satin and Matte. Light seems to fall into it, in fact so much so that it was actually a bit of a pain to photograph as my camera could not pick up a light reading from many angles. I wonder if Lian Li have been working with Lockheed Martin?
Both the sides and roof are devoid of any windows or fan grills, however the roof does have a removable section allowing the addition of a roof mounted fan should you so desire. The side panels are secured by means of knurled thumb screws, but also have small metal loop brackets allowing for them to be padlocked if theft of the internal hardware is a concern.
The front of the case is a simple affair, dominated by the large mesh grill protecting the two 140mm fans feeding air in the front of the case. Above the grill is a a simple line of I/Os in the form of 2xUSB3, a single eSATA and a set of audio jacks. The power switch is a thin strip of rubber, back lit with a blue LED, to double up as a power on light, so subtle and stealthy is it's appearance that it actually took me a few moments to work out that this was in fact the power switch. The PC-90 offers just 2 external 5.25" bays, with one already pre plumbed with a sleek optical drive bay cover and switch. Just a personal opinion, but I think drive bay covers such as this ought to be mandatory as nothing ruins the looks of a case more than the sight of an ugly optical drive.
Moving to the rear of the case we see that as with most Lian Li cases the brushed black has given way to naked Aluminium. The PSU is mounted at the top of the case old school style with Lian Li offering the ability to fit the PSU from the outside as well as the inside by virtue of having a removable mount secured by 4 thumb screws.
Beneath the PSU area we find the 120mm extract fan protected by a classic circular wire guard. To the left of this lies the rear I/O slot. Under the rear fan are 2 water-cooling tube ports each protected with a rubber grommet. The lower section of the rear of the case houses the 10 expansion card slots. each one having a removable vented slot protector.
I often think that it's round the back end of a case that we get an idea of the manufacturers Quality standards and attention to detail. What I mean is if they can be bothered to make the bit that's not seen as high a quality as the bits that are then things usually bode well. for that reason I've included a few close ups of the PCI slot protectors and would urge you also to re examine the picture of the PSU mounting plate and screws above left.
Most Recent Comments
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Originally Posted by sheroo
I think you've been more than generous giving it a silver. I wouldn't pay that kind of money for a case, knowing that no matter how much effort I went to that the cabling is still gonna look like a dogs breakfast. Lian-Li need to take their quality and get more innovative the way Silverstone have. |
It fits HTPX and EBB boards (dual socket) and yet its still midtower!
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Originally Posted by tinytomlogan
Think you are missing the point of this case though fella, its deffo not a show off case, more a compact but still get a huge rig inside kinda case. It fits HTPX and EBB boards (dual socket) and yet its still midtower! |
If they had left sufficient space behind the motherboard tray, and even mounted the hard drives behind it as well - then it'd be a different story.
but if u can look at the results u will see that exactly the price range take the all thing down, ok the performance also.
And yeah, ill still buy the Silverstone Raven 02 (wich i have) 100x more.
Tom u r right with motherboard sizes, the raven does not suport this ones... but hey, for Ivy Bridge its TOP.
10x for a super review again !
How can you not see that FFS?
EDIT: i like the drive mounting personally but how hard would it be to put in some space behind the mobo tray so you can keep the wires for the mobo and stuff AWAY from the cables for the HDD's with them being in that position to make things easyer to swap in/out if something dies.
This is obviously 100% driven towards the workstation side of computing, the big hdd columns are a dead giveaway lmao.
If lian li intend to release a case what should look good then they would include a nice side window with pre drilled cable routing holes.
It's a practical workstation case that is actually executed fairly well.
overall 6.5/10 pre modded.
could be cheaper though...
I agree the cable management is a bit of a pain, however it's not the end of the world having to cut out some cable management holes, especially if you're going to spray the internals anyway (which I know plenty will)....
HDD storage is novel, and frankly it's a huge improvement for them to get so much into so little space.
Review says it scrapes a Silver, which I think is fair. It's probably at the bottom of the silver category, but probably deserves that position.
kd
The PC-100 has a "reversed" motherboard design, where the motherboard IO and the PCI slots lead out the front, then there's a grommeted track for passing the cables out the back, which is mostly a couple of 140mm fans.
This actually makes cable management very easy, since the 24-pin and video card cables get passed around the back of the mobo tray. All the unused cables fit behind the mobo tray, and there's a hole on the bottom where I routed all the cables for the case lights and switches, and the floor-mount SSDs.
The downside of the reversed motherboard is that centrifugal fan graphics cards blow out air that gets sucked back in. But my card has the down-fan style heat sink, so I expect it's not an issue.
The real brilliant aspect of this design is that I will never have an obsolete front IO panel. When I upgrade my motherboard, e.g. to a board with Thunderbolt, my "front" panel will have it.
I could go on. Basically, I think I got the better of the "Hammer Bros," especially on sale for $130.
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No the Mobo tray isn't removable. Not without a Dremel any way
I think it looks ok, the only weird thing is the drive mounting.
The 2x140mm radiator in front support is brilliant tho & the case looks nice from the outside.
it looks very much to me like it would be an easy job to mount a 2x140mm rad and fans in this area. enough room perhaps even for a push pull set up
Looks like there's loads of room in the bottom also for pump etc if you wanted to go watercooling.
The only problem I have had with lian-li brushed aluminium cases is vibration
(edit) my mistake, it's 6 hard drives......... then yes i would say the case is fit for purpose and deserves its score
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Originally Posted by Jujumonkey
Good review as usual mr Logan......... the build quality is lovely, and being a craftsman myself it makes my heart happy to see the pride they display in their quality of craftsmanship, it's a rare thing these days. The hard drive placement seems counter productive to the purpose of the case though, am i right in thinking that there's only room for 3 hard drives? A 3 drive raid system in a case that can hold a dual cpu board seems a little bit pointless (edit) my mistake, it's 6 hard drives......... then yes i would say the case is fit for purpose and deserves its score |
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Let's take a look at one of the latest offerings from LIAN LI. The PC-90. AKA "The Hammer"
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