HDD Rack and Installation:

     More detail shots here. The HDD rack will hold up to four HDD devices and features a 120mm primary intake fan to keep them cool. Rubber grommets also reduce overall vibration and help cushion any potential shocks to the drives.

   Lian Li goes to great lengths throughout the case and it's no surprise to find a lovely jewel integrated into the HDD rack - a mesh air filter. Concept is fairly straight forward here but I would note that to access the filter you will have to completely unscrew the unit and remove it about an inch from the chassis. Frankly this doesn't bother me as I am not a weekly filter washer so overall I find this HDD rack to be superb.

   Screwless mounting might have been nice but honestly I almost prefer the rubber grommets. Again this is not a cheap bench case meant for weekly hardware infusions - but rather an elegant display case. Lian Li makes exceptional cases targeted at serious system builders. In my opinion serious system builders scoff at removable mobo trays and don't mind wielding a screwdriver as it is a labor of love.

   I as impressed with bracketry that mounts the power/reset buttons and status lights to the chassis shown left. Middle and right show the front of the case in a little more detail. The top rubber door buffer can be seen mounted right below the top lip.

   The bay inserts are also aluminum and feature obviously meshing not to mention sturdy and quite solid.

    The only incident I had with this case involved the floppy drive adapter. I mounted the drive as close to the front bay cover as I could which inadvertently blocked the floppy drive ejection button from fully extending when a disc was inserted. This prevented the drive from functioning properly but was easily resolved by simply mounting the drive far enough back to allow for proper button operation. If it is not clear - the drive adapter/faceplate unit features a pass-through eject button which must be spaced far enough from the actual button to allow for complete operation. My mistake.

   Here are a few shots of the HDD rack loaded with twin SATA drives - and yes they are purposefully mounted upside-down so that the SATA cables are against the far wall of the chassis when the HDD rack is installed. Left two Lite-On drives are shown installed and they do look quite elegant if I do say so. On a side note the two "side-walls" of the 5.25" bays are rather close together - meaning that significant pressure is required to overcome the friction of the tight fit. This is not a serious concern to me as everything still functions perfectly and may have very well been present only in this specific sample. Some very slight tweaking might be called for by Lian Li when sizing the bay width.

   Here we see a loaded mobo fully installed. One note I will make is that cheaper no-name power supplies will definitely not have long enough cabling to supply the ATX or P4 ports on virtually any motherboard.

   Shown here is a Vantec ION2 which obviously has sufficient cable length - although barely. In the middle picture you can see the P4 connector on this specific board happens to end up in the farthest possible location from the PSU as the board is flipped. Consumers should keep this in mind when planning system hardware.