Little Devil LD-V4 Test Bench Review

Introduction

Any one that tests a lot of hardware whether it be an avid over clocker hardware reviewer or even someone working in an RMA centre really shouldn't be without a decent test bench. The ability to easily change hardware but also keep everything safe secure and be able to easily move it make a decent bench table a wise investment. The industry has been dominated by just one brand when it comes to hardcore enthusiasts with the like of Lian Li and Coolermaster having a go but never really getting it right. Recently thought there have been several companies entering this area of the market with some brilliant products. So today we make a start by looking at a bench table that has just been released by LD Cooling. Yes that is Little Devil for those of you that know what prometia means! 

Specifications

Video Review




Conclusion

So there are a number of good an bad points we need to cover with the PC-V4, we will start with what we feel are the negatives. The bench feet are metal, all metal no rubber or damping in sight at all, this for a bench that has gone further than any other test bench we have seen to damp any possible noise from HDD's or ODD with the use of rubber grommets on the mounting points for the drives AND the drive case itself. You might not think then that with this amount of damping it would be a problem and it doesn't really effect noise as such but it does ruin and work surface you are likely to use it on, I guess its more of a shock as we have become so accustomed to rubber feet on our other benches that this almost feels wrong or cheap.

Next up would be the PSU and HDD mounting cage points, they are fixed with no options to move them around or even swap them over. This really became an issue with our dual Xeon Insanity review we did recently when the PCI-E cables were quite literally at their limits trying to reach the GPU's. We suspect many people would have not been able to fit them at all and we were on the verge of having to use extensions (something most people wont just have laying around).

The last point is a picky one but the cables from the power and reset switches are not braided, sure its great to have anti vandal switches bundled with the bench but the plain cables just make it feel cheap which for a test bench with a price tag twice the price of most others is never really a good thought to be having enter your head.

From here on out though the smaller touches do explain the extra price in my opinion. Every threaded point on the whole table is a rivnut (rivet with a thread in it for those that don't know the lingo) or an inserted stainless thread and this wins some serious quality points in my eyes and should see this bench out living most others.

It supports pretty much every motherboard form factor around from ITX all the way up to HTPX, including the extra expansion slots to cope with a full rack of GPU's on an XL-ATX board. You may find some slightly misalignment issues when trying to mount an EBB board but it wasn't technically on the support list either. Cable routing holes are there for the normal ATX sized boards and then a second set for the HTPX sized monster boards also.

The table also has mounts for 2x 360mm radiators with enough room underneath to be able to run 60mm thick radiators with 2 sets of fans, where to place the rest of the components for your loop may take a bit of thought and imagination though.

Build quality of the unit overall is brilliant, the powder coating quality isnt quite perfect but its really not bad for a mass produced unit either. The satin white finish of our unit really does grow on you to the point I think I now prefer this to gloss! The Aluminium construction really helps keep the weight down too which is very surprising at first considering its size.

Overall we love the LD PC-V4 but we feel the few niggles we found stop us from wanting to give it a fully fledged gold when also considering its price tag but we are happy to award it the OC3D Silver award. If however Little Devil were to go away and correct the issues we have raised in this review we would happily upgrade it to a gold award and even go as far as to say that it would be worth every penny of the extra purchase price over some of the other tables available on the market today. 

   

Thanks to LD Cooling for the test bench on review today, you can discuss your thoughts in our forums.