ABOUT BENCH FORUMS PODCAST LOGIN REGISTER
PC Components▼
Smartphones & tablets▼
Systems▼
ENTERPRISE & IT
GUIDES▼
DEALS

Lian Li's PC-90: The Hammer Strikes Hard

 by Dustin Sklavos on February 21, 2012 12:00 AM EST
54 Comments | Add A Comment
54 Comments

Assembling the Lian Li PC-90

I have to be honest, what Lian Li packages with the PC-90 is pretty daunting, and I think a lot of it really could've been excised without harming the overall package. There is such a thing as too much, and the PC-90 finds it. Lian Li includes a plastic case for holding screws, a nice touch, but also includes several confusing plastic pieces that you'll find are supposed to be snapped into the middle plate to help brace expansion cards. These are liable to be used for bracing extra-long workstation cards, but it still feels excessive and worse, needlessly confusing.

Thankfully, if you can parse out what Lian Li includes, assembly of the PC-90 is actually fairly simple and logical. The motherboard tray comes with standoffs for an ATX motherboard already installed, and once you take those drive and cable routing plates out things are a lot simpler. There's plenty of space for installing the motherboard as well as wiring it up and installing any expansion cards you may have. Better still, Lian Li includes special thumbscrews for mounting the motherboard, making it that much easier.

Gallery: Lian Li PC-90 Assembly

Where assembly is a little out of order with the PC-90 is when installing storage drives. Those go on the plates and the plates go in last, so before you do that, you'll want to install the power supply and optical drive. The power supply goes in easily enough; remove the mounting bracket from the back (attached with four thumbscrews), screw the bracket on to the PSU, and then slide the PSU into the enclosure and secure it. You can actually remove the top panel of the PC-90 if you're so inclined, but it's not necessary.

Installing the optical drive involves popping the front panel off (it's designed to come off easily but also stay on securely). From there, you need to remove the fascia for the optical drive (held on by two screws), then screw in four rubber grommets and screws into the sides of the drive. Slide it in on the rails until it's in as far as it can go, then replace the fascia. The problem with this design is the same one that plagued the other Lian Li systems I tested: the button on the fascia just doesn't line up with the button on our Blu-ray drive, and there's no simple way to correct it. Understanding that not using the fascia might break up the PC-90's aesthetic, I think it's still a sacrifice worth making.

Before installing the 3.5" and 2.5" drives, you'll want to make sure everything else is wired up first, and you may even want to have the power and SATA leads ready for the drives. The drives are mounted by using thumbscrews with rubber grommets; the drives pop into the plates and slide into a locked position, and it's actually reasonably secure. You'll want to consult the manual on how exactly to orient the drives, though, lest you risk installing them the wrong way the first time like I did. Lian Li wants the cables to be routed through the center plates (and accompanying routing holes), but I honestly felt like this was an untenable solution. End users may be better off removing the center plates outright.

Lian Li's design for the PC-90 does feature one major shortcoming, and that's cable management. Given the way they intend components to be installed in the enclosure I have a hard time seeing how they could've done a much better job, but it does bear mentioning that much like many older enclosure designs there are going to be a lot of floating cables. Lian Li's engineers pay lip service to the idea of routing cables behind the motherboard tray, but realistically there's virtually no space back there.

I'll confess that once I got everything put together, I was skeptical of how well the PC-90 would perform. This straightforward wind tunnel design can be absolutely fantastic (as SilverStone's smaller TJ08-E proves), but with all of the floating cables potentially obstructing airflow and few allowances for handling them, it's easy to see how the PC-90 could lose a lot of that cooling potential. Thankfully it acquitted itself very well when the time came to do thermal testing.

In and Around the Lian Li PC-90 Testing Methodology
PRINT THIS ARTICLE
Comments Locked

54 Comments

View All Comments

  • jjj - Tuesday, February 21, 2012 - link

    too bad you aren't actually testing it with at least 2 GPUs

  • jjj - Tuesday, February 21, 2012 - link

    lol got to add some more because this review just bugs me.
    Sure you got your standard testing for the sake of consistency but why just stick to it when it's not appropriate for the product? With 2 sockets and/or more than one GPU you don't only have more heat but the location of the hotspots changes and that does make a difference.Ofc you also got a very different scenario for SB-E where if you push the air back from the CPU you got some RAM in the way and you don't get any air over the VRM and that's far from ideal.

  • Sabresiberian - Tuesday, February 21, 2012 - link

    I agree here, a 10-slot case should be tested with an extended ATX mainboard and at least 2 graphics cards.

    Better yet, slam one of those EVGA dual-CPU bad boys in and load it up with all the GPU it can handle. If I were buying this case, it would be for that kind of setup. (Probably not dual CPU, but definitely 3 graphics cards. Overclocked CPU.) How well does everything fit, and does it stay cool in that king of setup?

    I don't understand why adding pieces of plastic to support heavy graphics cards means there is too much there. Now, if they throw in a bunch of odd-looking things and don't explain what they are for, I'd sure gripe about a poor manual, but not that they supplied extra parts I didn't happen to need.

    Nice article really, just would like to have seen a more stressful test.

    ;)

  • 1ceTr0n - Tuesday, February 21, 2012 - link

    Lian Li makes ANOTHER boring, ugly ass case and claims it to be "UNIQUE" and "DIFFERENT".

    Lian Li hasn't made a single case that looked halfway decent IMO since the PC-68 back late 2001. The one and only Lian Li i've ever owned.

  • alufan - Tuesday, February 21, 2012 - link

    rubbish i got a A70 a while back and its perfect tbh choice of top or bottom psu mount, up to 10 HDs all with fan cooling built inspace and support for the largest GPU cards available and it looks so simple and fuss free and minimalist, it also has factory made top panel with rad and fan mounts built in, look back in the DNA of silverstone et al and Lian Lis ideas will all be looking back at you

  • CloudFire - Tuesday, February 21, 2012 - link

    Agreed, Lian Li makes horrible cases. There are a few exceptions but like this one, the majority of them are horrid. Money can be spent way better elsewhere. Seriously, look at the wiring done in the assembled case. No thank you. The only thing I give Lian Li is their finesse when it comes to minimalist design and elegance; case design/layout is terrible.

  • aznofazns - Tuesday, February 21, 2012 - link

    And what do you consider to be an aesthetically pleasing case? Antec 900? BARF932?

    Take a look at the PC-P80, PC-V2120X, and basically all of the mini-ITX/micro-ATX cases they've put out in the past 5 years. If you think those are "boring, ugly ass" cases then you must be 12 years old.

  • MilwaukeeMike - Tuesday, February 21, 2012 - link

    BARF932... I laughed. Gonna use that if you don't mind.

    Yes, it's aesthetically pleasing... so are the other cases you linked. But why are the prices so high? So I can feel good making pretentious statements about being 'minimalist'? A high price for this case, and the ones you linked ($309, $469 on newegg), without knowing where my money is gonig leads me to think it's a marketing stunt and i'm paying for the priviledge of owning a Lian Li case.

    Thanks, but i'll pass.

  • tecknurd - Tuesday, February 21, 2012 - link

    I have a Lian Li case and it is probably model PC-68, but I do not remember. Besides that, Lian Li case does make plain cases, but Lian Li puts the work on the DIY for making their case their own unique case. Depending on the model, can add extras to Lian Li cases.

    I will own another Lian Li case because they are easy to build a computer compared to other brands. Lian Li has tight tolerances, so drive bays and expansions are with in spec. Do not have to use a rubber headed hammer to pound the drives in place or a screw driver to leverage the expansion slots in place while screwing them down. The motherboard tray from Lian Li moves out smoothly compared to their competitors.

  • Dustin Sklavos - Tuesday, February 21, 2012 - link

    Respectfully disagree with your point that Lian Li cases are easy to build compared to other brands. The Lian Li cases I've tested have consistently been the most time-consuming and frustrating ones to build in. The PC-90 was the least offensive that way.

    If you want something well made and easy to build in, Corsair remains for me the gold standard for ease of assembly.
Copyright © 2024. All rights reserved.
BENCH
TOPICS
FOLLOW
ABOUT

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now