Lian Li's Double-Wide PC-08 Chassis Features Tempered Glass Front Panel
The PC-08 is Lian Li's latest design, the PC-08, and it's an interesting take. Featuring a dual-compartment setup, the PC-08 is a large ATX case designed to showcase your best hardware while hiding away less eye-catching parts such as hard drives and the power supply. This idea isn't new and has been used in various cases in the past, but what is new is the front panel – or rather the lack thereof.
Where you would traditionally find a font bezel made of plastic or aluminum, but without the need for an optical bay, there is no longer a need for a traditional front bezel. Instead, Lian Li installed a solid piece of tempered glass across the entire front of the case. As a result, the components installed can be seen through the front panel.
The left side of the case is also made of a solid piece of tempered glass. The glass panes are not attached to an aluminum side panel; they simply have holes in all four corners that are used to attach them with thumbscrews directly to the case. Lian Li also included an RGB LED light kit that lights up the whole case. Three nobs are found on the back of the case to adjust each color independently.
Lian Li included significant water cooling support. Options for radiators include a single 120 x 120 mm rad in the rear exhaust of the motherboard compartment, and a 120 x 120 mm or a 120 x 240 mm radiator can be installed in the offset holes above the motherboard. On the right side, with the hard drives, there is support for either a 120 x 120 mm, 120 x 240 mm, or a 120 x 360 mm rad. All three spaces can be used together with no restrictions.
Lian Li also said that the component options are not restricted either. Graphics cards up to 370 mm (14.5") long will fit, CPU coolers as tall as 170 mm (6.7") are supported, and all power supply sizes can be accommodated with a maximum clearance of 298 mm (11.7").
The hard drive cage is located on the right side of the case behind the motherboard tray. Lian Li said this cage will support up to eight drives -- six 3.5" drives and two 2.5" laptop or SSD drives. There are two 120 mm fans installed inside the drive cage to help keep the drives cool. The cage itself removes with four thumb screws found in the rear of the case. This should make installing hard drives fairly simple. The power supply mount is located directly below the hard drive cage.
Lian Lis' PC-08 will be available at the end of June with a suggested retail price of $395.
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Kevin Carbotte is a contributing writer for Tom's Hardware who primarily covers VR and AR hardware. He has been writing for us for more than four years.
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geofelt No dvd is a killer for me.Reply
And the intake fans should be on the side that needs the cooling, namely the graphics cards ad the cpu. Not the psu and hard drives. -
Quixit ReplyNo dvd is a killer for me.
And the intake fans should be on the side that needs the cooling, namely the graphics cards ad the cpu. Not the psu and hard drives.
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smccloud Reply
Some of us like having our optical drives inside our computer. I know I don't want to have to buy an external USB drive or a SATA enclosure for my current one.No dvd is a killer for me.
And the intake fans should be on the side that needs the cooling, namely the graphics cards ad the cpu. Not the psu and hard drives.
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jossrik As far as the cooling, if you're spending that much on a case, you're not using the cooler that came in the box. Water cooling would be ideal here taking the heat into the radiators then out the back I guess. There's room for monster tower coolers, but it really sounds like it's supposed to be water cooled.Reply -
Dan414 You still need some airflow over VRM heatsinks, RAM, the northbridge chip heatsink, etc, and other things that you wouldn't normally connect to the watercooling system. I'm not sure that rear exhaust fan would be enough.Reply -
gggplaya THis looks like it has poor airflow, the corsair design at least draws and exits on the same side in a large breeze across the motherboard. Not here, looks like you'll have some air stagnation and turbulence.Reply -
stoned_ritual It looks very nice (no duh, it's a lian li). I think the lack of cooling for the motherboard compartment would be offset by running a custom water loop, as there are great spots to mount radiators. You could still air cool this chassis, but I would like to see some benchmarks before making an opinion on weather or not that's a viable option for high end hardware. They could have at least included one or 2 intake fans on the floor for us air cooling folk.Reply