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
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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lucky9 - Tuesday, February 21, 2012 - link
The noise and heat figures are compelling. Agreed the price is at least $50 high.Personally I have no use for this design but it seems to be a great one for those that need a large motherboard it a smaller space.
But I wouldn't trade my K-62 for anything I've ever seen in the same size/price range.
Veroxious - Tuesday, February 21, 2012 - link
It certainly is a matter of personal taste but as previous posters have pointed out at the price tag money can be better spent elsewhere like on a more powerful GPU / additional GPU.I for one would not be able to live with the drives hanging on the side and having cables all over the place. Also the PSU arrangement is less than ideal and a step backwards IMO.
The main reason I would not buy most Lian Li cases is the absence of a side window. I for one like the ability to the see the hard work I put in putting together my rig and the non-standard accessories in it. While not to everyone's liking I simply love my HAF.
kevith - Tuesday, February 21, 2012 - link
Great review. I would say, that I don´t find the looks of this cabinet neither pretty nor the opposite. And I don´t think looks are a big deal, if it is not one of the above.But performance wise I find it even very interesting. I think the results points towards very good thermal capabilities with more than one video card and/or a SNB-E processor.
Do you think the thermal performance has a lot to do with the case being made from aluminum? Does the case itself heat up during load?
Because if it doesn´t, I´d think this could be a very good platform for a cool and quiet case, if one were to add more fans and sound dampening applications to the panels and internal surfaces.
cyabud - Tuesday, February 21, 2012 - link
I have a PC-9 made of the same materials and it gets slightly warm on the top and side of the case around the CPU. The case has some great features but - like the PC-90 - cable management's a complete joke. Can anyone recommend a stylish and well-designed case that does the job but doesn't look like a spaceship?Observist - Tuesday, February 21, 2012 - link
I also have a PC-9F... with 2 GPU's and 4HDD's and a top-mounted ventilation fan, and I think the cable management is fine. There's not a lot of room behind the MB tray, but aside from that it's the same layout as a Corsair 650D and a bunch of other cases. Not sure what non-joke cable management would look like by your criteria. Cables need to go where they need to go.What the PC-90 lacks in cable management, it makes up by getting the HDD's out of the way of the front ventilation fans. Cables impede airflow, but not as much a big HDD cage like in the PC-9F.
That said, most of the nicer, well-designed, non-spaceship cases are included in this comparison - Silverstone FT02, Antec P280, Corsair 650D. Fractal Design and BitFenix also make some clean-looking cases. Maybe a Corsair 600T... looks slightly obese, but that leaves a lot of room for cabling. CoolerMaster CM690 II isn't too bad either, for an older, less expensive case.
cyabud - Tuesday, February 21, 2012 - link
I just find it very difficult to get it looking tidy. That said I have a lot of drives in there and a MB with very awkwardly positioned SATA ports, which clearly doesn't help.Thanks for the non-spaceship case suggestions. Currently salivating over the Antec P280.
TerdFerguson - Tuesday, February 21, 2012 - link
An overly kind review, to be sure. I understand that you want to keep those review samples coming in, but this case isn't worth $50.rscoot - Tuesday, February 21, 2012 - link
Hammer Time.(can't touch this post)
burntham77 - Tuesday, February 21, 2012 - link
I am so conflicted when it comes to choosing my next case. I love the elegance of a case like the PC-90, and yet I also crave a case with a side-window so I can see all of my hardware (and the neat cabling job). I yearn for understated, but I also year for gaudiness.Observist - Tuesday, February 21, 2012 - link
Corsair 650D is your answer! It's basically a Lian-Li with a side window.