Installation

I began installation by removing the motherboard tray and screwing on the spacers aided by the stand-off screwdriver. Annoyingly, the holes aren’t marked by a legend which most other cases now have as it’s just a case of stamping the tray. Instead you’ll have to get your motherboard and slowly line up the holes and remember where they are while you quickly fasten the stand-offs.

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The motherboard was pretty easy to seat in its new home once the stand-offs were where they’re meant to be – everything lines up perfectly. The blanking plate was a bit of a tight fit but it fitted in after a bit of bending.

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Once you’ve screwed the grommet combo onto your HDD, it’s a simple case of removing the other side panel and slotting your disc into place. Attaching the grommets takes the longest time, but the actual installation can be measured in seconds. If you find that the way that the HDD cage cradles your drive isn’t secure enough, you can use the middle drive screw hole and some of the supplied bolts to get it firmly attached.

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The optical drives are equally easy, as you simply pop the front panel off, remove the blanking plate and slide your drive in. The clip automatically engages and keeps your drive in place. However, the clip is quite weak and with a little over exertion you can remove the drive accidentally. While it makes positioning your drive much easier, and will be sufficient for a rarely used drive, the screw holes are needed.

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The power supply was next on the list of things todo and can be done with or without a motherboard installed as there is no strengthening bar running along the top of the case. You simply slide it into the cradle and fasten the four screws at the rear. Well, that’s how its meant to go. As the front I/O cables are nicely tucked away at the top, the clip that holds them there gets in the way of your PSU. I was using a petite sized model and you’ll definitely have to remove the self-adhesive clip if you want to use something with a bit more clout. Once the PSU was in place, there was no holding the end while trying to quickly screw it in place with one hand; instead the cradle holds the power supplier while you faff around with your Phillips.

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Like all other Lian Li cases, there aren’t any crazy plastic add-in slot tool-less systems, and instead you have to use the simple but effective screws. Each one holds a removable and replaceable vented PCI cover which is a whole lot better than the cheap snap-it-out-once style. As there isn’t anything special about these slots, you won’t run into any problems when using a dual slot cooler. It’s a shame however that these bays don’t use the same thumbscrews as on the back like the PC-B20 did.

As graphics cards are yet to join us in the metric age, I measured the space from the PCI slots to the HDD cage at the front and you have a good 11.5” of space, which is more than enough for a GTX. Happy days for expensive GPU owners. If you find that you have a ridiculously sized graphics card that won’t fit, you can actually remove the HDD cage and just use the external 3.5” bay or 5.25” to 3.5” converters for your data stores. Removing the HDD cage is a bit of a pain, but you’ll need to do this if you want to replace the front two 120mm fans. The HDD cage can be turned around if you don’t like the way its faced too, although there is little point.

No matter what cooler I used, the side panel would always shut perfectly, this includes the epic Noctua NH-U12P heatsink and the IFX-14. Happy days for over-the-top cooler owners.

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Routing all of the cables was pretty simple, as you just run them either behind the motherboard tray or along the bottom of the case. Behind the tray, the cable clips are useful but a little weak in that they pop undone if you have one too many cables underneath. For thinner cables (couple of PSU molex cables) they are perfect for the job.

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Click to enlarge - with side blowing fan