Quick Look
Lian Li PC-6070 The Good

Click to enlarge.
+ 1.0mm Aluminum Chassis
+ Front Panel USB
+ Heavy duty aluminum door
+ Four exposed 5-1/4" drive bays
+ Up to eight 3-1/2" drive bays (3 exposed)
+ Removable motherboard tray
+ Sound dampening foam insulation
The Bad
- Not completely screw-less design
- Lack of front panel Audio/FireWire

Lian Li is one of the world's leading designers in aluminum computer cases. Since 1983, Lian Li Industrial Corporation has been manufacturing aluminum chassis and rackmounts. As soon as they saw a market for desktop and server cases, they moved in for the kill.

Lian Li's years of experience in aluminum has given them the knowledge and skills that they need to design and manufacture innovative products that perform better than many other cases at their level.

The PC-6070 is no different than any other model in their line of desktop cases. It has many of the same features as the others in its class, but with a few more additions to create a sense of uniqueness. Take a look at how it compares to the rest, as we open it up and put it to the test.

More information on the PC-6070 is available at Lian Li's website.

Special thanks to Hampton Technologies for providing us with the Lian Li PC-6070 for this review.
Design
Comments Locked

19 Comments

View All Comments

  • puravsanghani - Sunday, March 28, 2004 - link

    #13: You're right! We have fixed this typo in the review.

    #18: I agree, we have been performing the heat tests with the power supply fan ON to simulate a system under normal operating conditions. The fan was only turned off for the noise benchmarks. We will state this in future reviews.

    Thanks for all of your input, if you have any other questions feel free to email me at purav.sanghani@anandtech.com
  • divide_by_zero - Sunday, March 28, 2004 - link

    "As mentioned before, Lian Li is well known for its aluminum products and they know how to use the metal alloy."

    Aluminum is a pure metal, not an alloy. Symbol Al on the periodic table of elements.

    On the Design page the link to the Silverstone Nimitz is to the manufacturer's page, not to the review that it refers to - which I'm sure has a link to the manufacturer on it and which I didn't see
    "Unlike the SilverStone Nimitz that we reviewed last week"

    I can see doing sound tests with the power supply fan off to eliminate it as a variable between cases. But it seems to be implied that the heat tests are also done with the power supply fan off. If this is true then the heat tests do not reflect actual operating conditions.
  • divide_by_zero - Sunday, March 28, 2004 - link

    "The third fan is mounted at the rear directly below the PSU opening. This single fan serves as the one and only exhaust for the PC-6070. We noticed that in many other cases, two fans are used to exhaust warm air out of the rear. This imbalance could cause increased temperatures of components, lowering the overall performance. And since there are no other openings on the chassis, additional fans cannot be installed."

    I would think that this actually is the correct number of fans to have be *in* balance, since the power supply will also be exhausting air.
  • ripdude - Saturday, March 27, 2004 - link

    Kristopher, could you take the Coolermaster CM Stacker STC-T01 in the roundup if you can lay your hands on one?
    I'd like to see it tested.

    --rip-dude
  • KristopherKubicki - Saturday, March 27, 2004 - link

    Purav and I are working on a roundup. We got a new testbed, A64 with Zalman 7000Cu hsf. We are RETESTING all of these. What fun!

    Kristopher
  • Gromis - Friday, March 26, 2004 - link

    Hmmm. From a $150 case, I'd have expected rubber grommets mounting for hard drives... after all, it's available in much cheaper units, such as HEC 6A series.
  • Visual - Friday, March 26, 2004 - link

    you listed 55dba for the kingwin while in its own review you listed it at 48dba so what's the difference from?
  • LarryHorse - Friday, March 26, 2004 - link

    I have this case and Spacecomber there is not much clearance between the heat sink and the power supply. I have a stock AMD heat sink and I get about an inch clearance.

    My temps range from 39C to 46C on a Barton 2500+ with stock settings. There is room below the back exhaust fan to install an addition fan if so desired.

    The case does run very quiet. This can best be heard when reading from an optical drive. Closing the front door almost completely removes the sound of the cd spinning up. This is great if you read or write a lot to a high speed drive.

    One or two more fans would have been nice and the case can get a little tight if you run a lot of drives or a larger heat sink, but overall a solid case.
  • thundershaft - Friday, March 26, 2004 - link

    I was on the market for a Lian Li case..
    I had to choose between the PC6089A or this case.. at the end.. I didn't like the PC-6070 because the lack of air... if u are running a hard-drive and 2 optics.. I think it is the best case around.. anymore than that? NO GOOD...
    I trieed it with my 8 drive setup.. TOO HOT INSIDE

    BTW.. spacecomber.. there is enough clearance space.. I have tested it with a enermax 565 and it works fine =)
  • Spacecomber - Friday, March 26, 2004 - link

    I liked the write-up and the choice of this case for a review. (I also see that page 3 is now fixed.) One area that I would have liked to have seen a bit more coverage about was how well this case can accomodate oversized heatsinks, such as those made by Zalman and Thermalright. A case like this is aimed at those wanting to build a silent computer, and one way to go about this is to use very large heatsinks and slow rpm fans. However, I'm afraid that this case will have a problem with any heatsink that overhangs the edge of the motherboard. I think this will be a problem with Zalman 7000A heatsinks when the socket is close to the edge of the board and with the Thermalright heatsinks that mount directly to the motherboard on socket A motherboards, if the socket is close to the edge. I see two ways that this could be a problem for this case. First, it will prevent the motherboard tray from sliding completely in or out. Second, there won't be enough clearance between the power supply and heatsink. A picture showing and/or some measurements about how much distance there is from the edge of the motherboard to the edge of the motherboard tray and from the edge of the mothergboard to the bottom of the power supply would be helpful in this regard.

    Just my 2 cents.

    Space

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now