Lian Li's PC-V353: Lighter Than Air
by Dustin Sklavos on September 28, 2011 4:30 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- MicroATX
- SFF
- Lian Li
- Mini-Tower
Conclusion: Only if You Plan to Move It
I was honestly really looking forward to getting Lian Li's hardware in house. The company is held in high esteem, and their case designs are both well regarded and oftentimes very unique. I actually have two more cases en route that look to be extremely interesting to review, but the PC-V353 seems like a miss.
Like many, I fear change and the unknown, and that's a small part of why the PC-V353 just didn't work for me. Deviations from traditional enclosure design should never feel arbitrary: they should either feel like an experiment or at least like a smart and intuitive alternative to existing approaches and design tenets. I don't think a side-mounted optical drive is necessarily a bad idea, for example. Virtually no one keeps their tower directly in front of them at home, so it would make sense to be able to mount the drive to the side. The problem is that the PC-V353 doesn't make a very convincing argument for the change, either, and it actually comes more at a detriment to aesthetics. Given the button placement on the PC-V353 (along with its generally diminutive stature), it seems like the case is designed to be placed on your desk, in which case having the ports and optical drive in the front would actually make more sense.
There's also the wasted case depth. While video cards that connect their power leads from the back are probably going to be fine, ones that connect from the top may run into serious problems. Likewise, given the way everything is perforated, wouldn't it make more sense to vent the side where the video card's fan is going to be? Blower-type coolers will probably be okay, but other ones are liable to be that much more problematic.
Finally, there's the asking price. $169 for the PC-V353 is just way too much. It's a nice and unique piece of aluminum, tremendously light and easy to move, but this case honestly would fare a lot better with fans. Lian Li offers the appropriate fan mounts, yet at this price I feel like optional fans should at least be included. SilverStone's Temjin TJ08-E is $69 less and performs better in every metric except weight and overall size. The PC-V353 isn't necessarily a bad case (there are no bad products, only bad prices), but for the price you just don't get enough. Unless you're married to the aluminum finish or want a new case to tinker with and modify, I'd recommend looking elsewhere in Lian Li's line.
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wordsworm - Wednesday, September 28, 2011 - link
I can see that there is a lot more area for the motherboard, but you just used a very small one. Second, I see a 750 watt power supply is installed. Why exactly was 750 watts required? Are you installing SLI in there or something? I can't even see a video card.This review really looks half assed. Which is really lame, because I have a particular interest in small and light cases which can handle a full sized ATX board and maybe even a video card... 10kg and carry-on luggage sized are my requirements for a new machine.
I just wish you'd made a better effort for this review.
TommyAU - Wednesday, September 28, 2011 - link
Your kidding me right?6 different pages of information and that's not enough for you...
How about you be greatfull someone went to the trouble to review it in the first place and at least say thanks
wordsworm - Wednesday, September 28, 2011 - link
Does this configuration of a micro atx without a graphics card and a 750 watt power supply unit at all look like a realistic configuration? This article fails in so many ways. I really hope the author reconsiders this article and considers taking this review a bit more seriously. Maybe actually try to make a decent build for testing rather than this rather thoughtless configuration.ie., You could probably throw in an AMD E350 and complementary board, fill up the harddrive bays, and try some home server task related work at it, and then check out temperatures, etc. You know, configure it like it is meant to be configured rather than what was done. Just using the number of pages is not a useful metric to gage the quality of an article.
Dustin Sklavos - Wednesday, September 28, 2011 - link
I'll tell you what. If you want to ship me the hardware you feel would make for an ideal build for this case, I'll happily retest it.Until then, may I remind you that we standardize on this testbed for a reason. Because I'm trying to figure out what sort of difference in the end results using a smaller power supply would really have.
zerockslol - Thursday, September 29, 2011 - link
http://images.anandtech.com/galleries/1409/cardcle...What does this look like? GTFO before you flame someone who's spending their time writing reviews of hardware for us, dipshit.
lrawrl - Thursday, September 29, 2011 - link
If he actually read the review he would understand why that exact PSU was used for the review (which is different than their usual reference configuration).Also, Dustin explains that there are no results for noise and cooling with a GPU in the case because the GPU from their standard test system uses the stock Nvidia reference design and the power connectors on this model do not line up with the cut-outs on Lian-Li's case.
If wordsworm actually read the 6 PAGE review, instead of just staring at the pretty pictures and graphs he would understand this.
SquattingDog - Wednesday, September 28, 2011 - link
If you read the testing methodology, you will see that this is one of the two standard configurations AT is using in their reviews. Agreed that the part selection seems a bit odd, but it is all to keep it as uniform as possible.Etern205 - Wednesday, September 28, 2011 - link
The case supports up to mATX so you can grab a Asus ROG Gene board and a pairof GTX 560Ti in SLI.
I've mentioned the GTX 560Ti because they're short in length which is what these cases are made for.
Flagrant - Wednesday, September 28, 2011 - link
Just an FYI the height of the vid card is also very important. any heatsink pipes that go even a little higher than rest of the card will screw you up with this case. The height given at the Lian Li website is not conservative. You need to allow for thickness of mobo.Etern205 - Wednesday, September 28, 2011 - link
Just buy a card without the nonsense and you'll have no problems.Looking at one of the pics a standard GTX580 fits.