Lian Li's PC-90: The Hammer Strikes Hard
by Dustin Sklavos on February 21, 2012 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- mid-tower
- Lian Li
Noise and Thermal Testing, Overclocked
As always, our overclocked settings separate the men from the boys. Lian Li's design in the PC-90 acquitted itself admirably in our stock settings, and as you'll see, the two intake fans and single exhaust are more than up to the task of keeping our system cool even when heavily overclocked.
It's virtually a clean sweep for the PC-90. Lian Li is able to do more with less than the competing enclosures are; it still manages to hang with the Cosmos II and it seems clear that the PC-90 can handle the kind of dual-CPU workstation it appears to have been designed for.
Even noise levels are actually decent. While idle noise is less than ideal, a proper implementation of fan control on the motherboard (or even a dedicated fan controller) could probably take the edge off of that. Meanwhile, load noise isn't great, but it isn't terrible either. Despite making no allowances for acoustics the way competing cases like the Level 10 GT, Cosmos II, and SilverStone FT02 do, Lian Li's PC-90 is still able to compete on noise (and flat out win on thermals).
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ckryan - Wednesday, February 22, 2012 - link
Lian Li's are difficult to build in for the most part. Especially the smaller ones. The PC V351 is a total bitch.just4U - Wednesday, February 22, 2012 - link
The older cases were a joy to work with.. Still never had a better case then the Lian-Li PC60.. for it's era it was remarkable. I still have two in use today and I to work with alot of the new designs that come out so it's not like there isn't something to compare to.Todays' Lian-Li needs to get back to the basics and understand what we want rather then throwing weird our way and hoping we will buy..... and I hope their execs read this!!! I'd really like to pull the trigger on new lian-li's but for now i'll pass and keep buying from corsair and cooler master, with the odd nod to antec.
pandemonium - Wednesday, February 22, 2012 - link
I, for one, enjoy the simplistic look of Lian-Li's cases.Robalov - Tuesday, February 21, 2012 - link
Nice results, but for that price, it looks a mess.I would like to see cheaper iterations based around that design in the future however.
cjs150 - Tuesday, February 21, 2012 - link
I love Lian li for much the same reason I love Silverstone cases, they dare to be different. There is a real attempt to rethink case design, unlike most case manufacturers whose idea of innovation is to stick a fancy front on the case and change the fans from 120mm to 140mm.Sadly like Silverstone sometimes the quality of construction does not match the originality of the original concept.
Mking the case 25mm wider and allowing for cables to be routed round the back would have been simple to achieve and immeasurably improved the case. Alternatively why not mound the drives behind the motherboard but with some channels for cable routing.
Fundamentally a nice try by Lian Li but not really convincing
DanNeely - Tuesday, February 21, 2012 - link
To make that work with the giant mobo form factors they're supporting they'd also need to make it an inch taller to have space for cable holes on the bottom. Not sure if they'd also need to mess with anything on the front end since it's hard to visualize how a massive HP-TX board actually would sit in it.cjs150 - Tuesday, February 21, 2012 - link
Maybe - although running cable holes down side of MB tray makes a lot of sense too.As a case I think it probably has real potential for watercooling but for a standard ATX board - radiators on front and bottom look rather obvious locations
Luay - Tuesday, February 21, 2012 - link
For a single GPU build, any two or three 120mm fan equipped case from CM, Rosewill or Antec for less than $60 will do the job.For SLI/CF, any mid tower 140mm fan equipped case for less than $100 such as the Rosewill Blackhawk will do.
For Tri-SLI/CF, I'll start looking for the 230mm big boys, HAFX or the $150 Rosewill Thor.
For Quad SLI-CF, I'll need a case with two PSU mounts and a minimum of four 230mm fans such as the $200 Rosewill Blackhawk Ultra.
as for this case, no side fan means the two 140mm front fans won't push the air all the way to the exhaust fan at the back, if more than one GPU or any obstructive device is installed on the motherboard. The roof intake fan is already feeding most of the air to the CPU and the cooler if it's there. I don't think it's safe to install more than one non-vapor chamber custom cooled (inside-case heat dissipating) video card in this case!
I don't believe this is a gamer's rig at all and your recommendation for the PC90 as such worries me.
Iketh - Tuesday, February 21, 2012 - link
Anyone who buys Rosewill is wasting money. Anything marked with Rosewill, run the other way as fast as you can.As for the rest of your post, you sound like a troll or a genuine retard.
Dustin Sklavos - Tuesday, February 21, 2012 - link
I disagree. The Rosewill Thor v2 has shaky build quality, but it's not terrible. On the flipside, the case is an incredible performer and probably the best bargain for a full tower on the market today.