Lian Li PC-60Plus

Benchmarks - Thermal

Describing the cooling equipment that comes with a case just doesn’t cut it for us. We need to see how it actually performs to see if it is as effective as what the manufacturer’s say. We have hand-picked a full system, which we believe is the current system setup for the average user.

PC Mid-Tower Test Bed
Chaintech VNF3-250 AMD Athlon 64 3200+ OCZ PC3200 DDR x 2 Zalman CNPS7000 Copper Seagate Barracuda 120GB SATA ATI 9800XT OCZ 520W PowerStream	Click to enlarge.

The thermal readings for the key components and points on the motherboard during operation were as follows. The numbers in each square represent the average ambient air temperature of that particular square inch of the case in degrees Celsius:

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We noticed how effective the CPU air duct was at helping to cool the heat sink fan as well as the CPU under it. The area above and around the CPU heat sink fan is about 1-2 degrees cooler, on average, compared to that of the PC-6070, and we safely assume the same compared to the original PC-60 case.

The side mounted blower fan also helped cool the area around the video card by moving warm air out through the back of the case. The temperatures here were decreased about 1-2 degrees on average also.

The most important improvement to the cooling system was the change to a 120mm fan at the front as an intake as well as the additional 80mm fan at the top of the case as an exhaust. Overall, the PC-60 Plus has an exceptional cooling system and it performs as well as some of those cases with 5-6 case fans. As we zero in on each critical system component, we predict the PC-60 Plus’s cooling system will have a positive effect on them as it did for the case’s ambient air temperature.

Take a look at the temperature readings of each critical component in our test rig.

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Our predictions were right - the temperatures of each critical component were 2-3 degrees cooler on average compared to the temperatures in previous case reviews. The CPU, heat sink fan, and video card especially ran much cooler due to the added air duct and blow fan.