Posted: April 29th, 2003
Written by: Justin "The Sheriff" Woods

First up: The Good

The first thing I noticed about the case is how light it is when empty. Actually, its pretty light with everything installed. Most of you looking for a case mod might not care about the weight, unless you are a serious LAN partier and have to pack your gear all over town; light is good, but light and cool looking is even better.

The long bezel wires are a nice touch

If you spend a lot of time tinkering with your PC or review hardware, the removable motherboard tray and quick connect case panel wiring simplify and quicken the task of removing motherboards from the case. Rather than out pulling the IDE LED, and other front panel connections, you just pull the quick connect and you're good to go. The connectors are nice and long so if you have an add-in RAID card that has front panel LED connections, you won't run out of length trying to hook it up.

This quick connect rules!

Tooless expansion card removal = bye bye screwdriver.

The next thing I fell in love with was the expansion port thumb screws. Popping a network or video card in and out is as easy, and tool-less. The only caveat is that the screws are a special proprietary thread, and have to be replaced with Lian Li screws, unless you can find others with the same thread. The polished inside of the case also helps reflect light around, which makes lighting the inside of the case a little easier, though fingerprints and scratches show a little quicker, I like the look. If you have lot of add-in cards, remember to save the back panel inserts just in case you swap your existing motherboard for one with everything integrated and no longer need the add-ins. You don't want to mix and match inserts in a case this lush.

Next Page: The Bad