Lian-Li PC-C50 Case
Here’s a quick review of an HTPC case from Lian Li, makers of all aluminum chassis. I used to have one, and the design was wonderful, not sure I’m a HUGE fan of this design but it seems to serve its purpose.
You can see from the pictures here, that the center bar is VERY close to my graphics card, in fact once the bar is screwed in it is preventing the removal of the power plugs from the card. Although it is very close, they are not touching. On a plus side the center bar is aluminum and will conduct heat so it may be acting as a additional heat sink. This is a very unique problem that is only going to happen with a Mini-ITX board and a full size graphics card with heat pipes, but it is still something to note.
Not sure why noone seems to
Not sure why noone seems to be making the obvious comparison to the SilverStone cases that are fairly identical to this one (and have been around for quite a while)… I *am* a huge fan of this design… the case is perfectly sized to fit in any home theater shelf/rack/enclosure etc and I think it’s perfect for Clarkdale/Sandybridge setups that don’t need full length discrete graphics cards.
My SilverStone GD04 is the first HTPC case I’ve been remotely happy with… the only thing it really needs IMO is a proper IR receiver on the front. Also, it can only have 3 max hard drives (1x 2.5, 2x 3.5) but this Lian-Li can do 6x (3x of each size) which is all sorts of intriguing. My GD04 does a better job with the optical tray, but it requires sticking on an aluminum cover onto my drive which isn’t ideal, but the end result is a very nice looking front end… I wish they could hide the ports/buttons better on both models, but now I’m just nitpicking. 🙂
Anyway, I know a lot of people like to cram a LOT of storage into their HTPC’s but I prefer to put those on other devices on the network and keep the main HTPC in this case as simple as possible. Having said that I do like having a bit of storage in this system so the extra couple of drive slots might be very nice.
As I love Lian-Li, perhaps this might be a contender for my next build!
I’m a big fan of Lian-Li’s
I’m a big fan of Lian-Li’s build quality, got one of their all aluminum cases to use for my dev box 5-6yrs ago and it still rocks. That said, I’m not sure they understand what I want in a HTPC case; no one will mistake that for anything but a big o’ PC…