Cooler Xtreme : Coolers
: Casing : Lian Li PC-31 Aluminium PC Case
Lian Li PC-31 Aluminium PC Case
Want a tasty PC case?
Decent expansion room, edges
that don't slice you open, groovy styling?
Well, here y'go.
And it's even small!
Lian Li's PC-31 mini-tower case
has a number of good points.
Good Point 1: It's black. If
you want a black case - and you know you do - here it is.
Good Point 2: It's made
of aluminium, so it's very light. 4.8 kilograms (10.6 pounds) without power
supply. It won't rust, either.
Good Point 3: Mucho ventilation
for your toasty-warm componentry. Two 80mm fans are mounted as standard
at the bottom of the front panel.
Good Point 4: Lots of room.
No fewer than eight drive bays, and a slide-out motherboard tray that'll
take any ATX board you care to name.
OK, now the bad stuff.
Bad Point 1: It ain't cheap.
Lian Li cases are very expensive, compared with the boxes in which most
people's computers live. The PC-31 sells for $USD150 , delivered. And that's
without a Power Supply Unit (PSU).
Bad Point 2: It's black.
That's bad as well as good, because black cases may look funky, but good
freakin' luck finding black-faced floppy and CD-ROM and DVD-ROM drives to
match.
Such things exist, but not many
places stock them. Directron
in the States is an exception; they have a whole subsection
for black components. But nobody but USAnians can order online from them.
Many people with an urge to
own a black computer covered with black buttons that light up black when
you press them therefore pry the beige bezels off their drives and paint
or dye them to match the case.
Plain brushed metal finish cases
don't look so dodgy with beige drive bezels breaking up the front panel.
But beige on black looks, to coin a phrase, totally pants.
The PC31 doesn't have too serious
a case of Black Box Disorder, though, because of its front panel decoration.
The drive bay openings are surrounded by a silver plastic bezel.
Generally speaking, PC cases
with cosmetic stuff stuck on them are A Bad Thing. Many Asian-made cases
with bolt-on plastic end up looking like a pump-up running shoe for a battlemech.
They're cheap, I grant you,
but it is my considered professional opinion that most of the darn things
are totally goofy looking.
My personal favourite was the
one with a bas-relief of Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet enjoying the
breeze on the bows of the Titanic moulded into the case's front panel. James
Cameron might have sued, if he could stop laughing long enough. Lian Li
haven't decided to target the pink-Pokemon market, though, and the PC-31's
plastic's pretty tasteful.
It bears close inspection, too.
Fit and finish are excellent. Like the bigger PC-60 (which I review in detail
here), the PC-31
may be expensive, but at least it looks it as well.
The front fan grille may be
a bit too BMW-ish for you, but it could be a very great deal worse.
So what do you get for your
money, besides a funky front panel?
