The Rise and Fall of Lian Li Aluminum Cases - Nifty Thrifties
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- Опубліковано 27 тра 2024
- I found a new-in-box vintage Lian Li PC-6077 in a thrift store. This all-aluminum beast is still sought after by both modern and retro PC builders thanks to its unique drive bay arrangement. Back in the year 2000, Aluminum was the hot new metal for crafting PC cases. Strong, lightweight, and stylish, it took the LAN party world by storm. What made them so great, and why did they fall out of the spotlight?
See the Blog Post for Transcript and Links: www.userlandia.com/home/2022/...
= Chapters =
00:00:00 - Intro
00:00:16 - Overview of the Lian Li PC-6077
00:11:54 - Interior and Build Considerations
00:21:28 - None Like It Hot!
00:29:39 - This Old Tower, Today
00:36:44 - Outro and Credits
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Really nice retrospective. I was Lian Lis #1 fan in the early 00's and still am today! I feel old
Glad you liked it. But you know what they say, the classics never go out of style.
Old is the new...new. 🙃| 👈This man is clearly intoxicated but respects his OG's. We have see things. Windows ME....Winamp....AOL trial disks. We had to run crap in DOS. You comment made me smile cause I be thinking the same thing sometimes. My tech started reminding me of grandpa stories when they be like "I had to walk 20 miles to school in the snow" and all that. Now its like "I used to move data through IDE parallel connectors at 100 MB/s!!"
as someone who was born on '03
Lian Li Aluminum case looks sleek
Brings back memories. I had one back in the day including the all copper Zalman flower and a Soundblaster 5-1/4 front header, though it was a CM ATC-201. Also had 2 WD 36GB Raptor HDDs in a RAID 0 arrangement and a 9800 All-In-Wonder graphics card, it was a beast. I'd planned to keep the case in future builds to justify the cost but When I upgraded a friend needed a PC so he inherited the full system.
Ah the Zalman flower.
Good times, good times.
Ahhhh, "Tiger Direct". I am also a Lian Li fan. I have owned five different type of "aluminum" cases. I still use Lian Li in my daily driver. Also, the wife's PC is sitting in a Lian Li.
FANTASTIC VIDEO!!! Bring back the aluminum cases!!!
It took me 10 years to finally replace my Lian Li PC-C33B last month. It feels bittersweet posting it on eBay for more than I paid for it, but I'm sure it will find a good home and be appreciated for many years to come.
What did you replace it with? Another HTPC case or something more traditional?
I worked in a local shop building custom systems 2000-2013. we absolutely stocked them and I loved building in them.
Your customers were lucky indeed.
In Australia I managed to get my hands on a perfect condition Lian Li Black PC-X2000FN from Marketplace for $120AUD. My most treasured possession to-date; ultimately turned it into a multi-VM multi-purpose Proxmox server that will be primed to be my daily driver for many many years to come (considering how monolithic newer gen graphics cards are becoming now!). I sourced a "vintage" Lian Li PC-B10 from eBay to use as spare parts for an extra $20AUD. It was too hard to pass up. Amazing quality -- It even says on the stickers: hand crafted in Taiwan!
Lian Li does more than the A4: Their aluminum manufacturing has shifted from retail to contractor manufacturing.
Many of the modern, premium, boutique ITX cases are designed by enthusiasts and then contracted to Lian Li for manufacturing, they are by far the experts.
Still, you'd want something a bit larger, a mATX Mini Tower would do wonders.
I used to have a PC-TU100 MiniITX case and a T60 Test Bench. Sold both for a pretty penny after I moved to laptop computers and my repair business also focused more on laptop upgrades than desktop diagnosys. Still miss them, but at least it relieves me that the buyers were friends of mine, still rocking both cases.
Glad to hear those cases survived!
The front of your Lian Li is good for a fan bracket mod. The older ones like the PC 50, PC 60
I bought a Lian Li PC-60 black mid-tower case sometime back in the early 2000's that I still use to this day! However, it now houses my media server running on a quad-core Q6600 and in 24/7 operation. The only issues I've had with the case itself is some noisy fans that after a quick cleaning and lubing are still working just fine! I also have another Lian Li case from the mid 2010's that is a full-tower case for my old gaming PC. This was right before they completely ditched the all-aluminum chassis. I don't plan on ever parting with either one of them.
Put some noctuas in there and it'll be even cooler and quieter!
Still use to this day, the Lian Li Tyr PC-X500B , release and bought in 2008. Was my main case till 2021. Still have a 9900K and a GTX 1080 Ti. Is on my 2th rig now. Change to a Fractal Meshify 2, because of space and air flow.
man talk about a good long walk in the past. I remember building a nearly fan-less Lian Li home theater pc with just the older zalman flower cooler, it worked great for the time, 2008ish, and was a tank on pushing 1080P to the tv till just a few years ago, it was replaced with an Apple tv that was quiter and had more power and would do 4K with out any issues.
Great vid, thanks! I still have a PC-60 that I had in college and its big brother PC-70 stored in my garage, along with the PC Power & Cooling 10 bay solid steel 75lb monster. I have always been meaning to repurpose them as server cases but haven't gotten to them yet, but watching vids like this makes me want to get them back up and running again. Glad I didn't sell them.
PC Power and Cooling, now there's a name I haven't heard in a very long time.
@@userlandia They are still around! Just not as good as they used to be before they were sold. I bought that 10 bay monster because it was one of the only cases that could house the first 500w power supplies they produced. It had a special backplate. I still have and use the 910w Silencer in a secondary pc. Still works like a champ but just have to figure out where to stuff all of the extra cables since its not modular. :)
I bought a PC-6077 new and used it for many years before passing it along to a friend. He's still using it, and today it houses a Ryzen 5 2600 build. I've owned 3 Lian-Li aluminum cases over the years, and still have one, a PC-A05FNA, that houses my Win 98 retro game PC. Great video on the subject. I really enjoyed it.
Glad to hear your case is still rocking! Really a testament to how useful these boxes were. Would be very curious how his build looks.
@@userlandia Thanks for the reply. I emailed you a couple of pictures. 🙂
@@thereallantesh It looks great in those pics! That one's definitely a keeper.
@@userlandia thank you so much. I'm looking forward to seeing what you decide to build in the 6077. I've subscribed so I can follow along.
I bought a black PC-6077B (though I swear it was a 6075B but I could be wrong. It's definitely identical to the one you showcase here) back in 2003 for like $400 in Okinawa when I was in the Marine Corps. It was my primary case for probably 6 or 7 years, at least all through the Windows XP era. It is now serving as a file server in the basement.
The ridiculous number of external 5.25" bays allows it to house two bay devices that can hold 5 x 3.5" drives in 3 x 5.25" slots, each with a 120MM fan up front. Can hold like 13? hard drives (Currently has 7 + a 2.5" SSD) Modern hardware works just fine. No dents or bent pieces, despite handling it quite frequently, though the feet got removed and lost somewhere along the way. With some fairly inexpensive magnetic bearing 80mm fans in it, plus the 120's, it runs very quiet. The "floppy" front bezel USB port cover still works just fine.
If I had one gripe, it'd be that I over tightened one of the motherboard tray thumbscrews and stripped the hole back when I first built in it, which is likely to be a problem in any aluminum case (and the fine thread on the thumbscrew certainly didn't help)
I've been in and out of it fairly regularly and swapped parts on it possibly hundreds of times at this point and it continues to hold up.
She started with an overclocked Pentium 4 2.4 Northwood, a Radeon 9800 Pro, and two 36GB WD Raptors in RAID 0 in her heyday as my primary gaming rig, and 15-odd years later, is chugging along with an i7-3770 and 6 x 1TB WD Golds in RAID 6
It was hideously expensive when I bought it, but I like to think I've gotten my money's worth over the years.
Glad to see a video about it in 2022
Great story! And yes, you absolutely got your money's worth. Nobody makes cases like this anymore, so if you've got one, keep it!
semper fi
I had a Kingwin KT-436S-WM three windowed silver aluminum case. I bought it from CompUSA for about $199 back in the early 2000s. It had a plexiglass window in each side panel and one plexiglass window mounted in the top. The inside was identical to a Lian Li PC-60 case.
My daily driver PC/workstation is in a Lian-Li PC-C32B HTPC case which sits in a cradle under my work desk. It has had a number of iterations of innards over the years (and is about to get a new set!) but the outside is as beautiful as ever. The upper 5.25" bay still has a DVD writer which is occasionally pressed into use to watch a movie one one screen while I work on the other two and the lower bay has a multi-format card reader. I still love this case and it is indeed still going strong after many years! I have no interest in the modern fashion for a disco in a box! 😂
By God, the memories! I had an all aluminium Chieftec from 2003-2015 I bought for a pittance. It lasted me through Uni, a move across the country and even a few years afterwards.
At least aluminum chieftecs could be moved, my steel Chenming OEM'd one was probably repurposed into a boat anchor after I gave it away.
My vintage Lian Li journey started with the PC-601 I fished out of my university's Physics-lab dumpster. It's got my Rampage III Formula and i7 990X running in it, cooled by a Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo and running a Strix R9 380 OC.
The second was the PC-61B I scored from Craigslist for $25. It had once been used at NORAD, and the retired employee who sold it to me said "it just looked too cool to put in the shredder", so the drives got shredded but the rest of the case got saved. It's got my Z87 Pro and i7 4770K running in it, cooled by a Noctua NH-U14s and running an EVGA GTX 980Ti SC2.
Just last week tho, I stumbled across yet another oddity...it certainly looks like a Lian Li, but the badging was replaced with a new logo: Velocity Micro.
Using Wayback Machine, I was able to identify just what it was: the Velocity Micro ProMagix HD60, and based on the configured components inside, it was once a $1600 prebuilt that I paid $80 for on Craigslist. Complete with cold-cathode lighting tubes and the optional acrylic side panel and optional aluminum locking wheels (just like the V1000).
Glad to see other enthusiasts saving these beautiful cases. Thanks for posting! You got lucky with that NIB find, especially for the price.
Absolutely got lucky, makes up for not being able to afford one all those years ago! Looking up that ProMagix, that's absolutely a rebadged Lian Li PC-V3000, or at least closely related. Probably one of the last of their real aluminum run.
@@userlandia I tried to look up the equivalent Lian Li model, but I couldn't find it. It's like they re-tooled the front panel entirely. The aluminum has a neat ripple texture to it.
The V3000 you mentioned was a more recent offering, I should have mentioned it came configured as a Core 2 Duo. Wayback Machine had to go back to like 2005/2006 to find it, there's surprisingly little info currently available for it.
If you search "ProMagix HD60 Core 2 Quad" or "Velocity Micro E2460", you'll see what I'm talking about. It has a cutout in the shape of an arrow toward the bottom of the case, almost like a play button. Apparently at one point Best Buy was selling them.
Ah, interesting, there seems to be multiple models with the same name. Yes, I can see the lineage now. Looks like a PC-60 descendant with the V1000's wheels. Lian Li may definitely have made a custom front bezel just for them.
I'm still using the PC-V1000 I bought in like... 2005 or 2006? I still think it's the nicest PC case ever made (the whole PC-V lineup, that is).
14:47 - 😂Hand Gymnastics....I'm dead. Thats a good one. Anyone that has built a PC or two knows exactly what you mean. I just realized this was a 37 minute video. Damn bro...you kept my interest for 37 minutes talking about a PC case......Your Good. You totally earned this like
I earned my gold medal in hand gymnastics thanks to Intel SC5200 server chassis all those years ago. :)
I still have my boxed, EATX PC-V1110 from my first power PC build in 2009 (in monolithic black) as well as a boxed PC-V354 in silver, which was a build for my daughter when she graduated high school in 2012 and she recently returned to me. My current daily use computer is housed in a PC-Q30 (2014 build, black but I wish now the silver was available at the time). The quality of these cases, both inside and outside, are still unparalleled IMHO. The front door of that PC-V1110 feels like a car door when opening and closing!
I've lived in the Dallas area since '86 and regularly attended QuakeCon with my daughter from 2006 to about 2015 and have seen many fantastic PC builds during that golden era! Thanks for this video, I really enjoyed it!
I used to play competitive Return to Castle Wolfenstein, I would have loved to go to QuakeCon back in the day... had to settle for our local regional LANs. :)
Nice old Lian Li case pickup for a fairly cheap price.
Yes, Lian Li were (and still are) very expensive cases in the beginning of 2000's, especially in Europe and where I live in France.
Your video reminds me I still have my old nice looking PC V-1000 case stored in my basement, good old memories...
Excellent video, well researched and well filmed! I have been a Lian Li aluminum fan since 2005 here and I am still rocking the utterly epic premium masterpiece by Lian Li, the Armorsuit case for my personal server since 2011. This this was an absolute marvel in terms of cooling and fit amazingly with server-grade drive cages from Chenbro or Supermicro. One case I will forever regret not buying was the PC-Q35 which was a lovely little NAS-style mini-ITX case.
I have a "sleeper" build in an old Lian Li case. I think its a PC70B it has 2 120mm fans.
I had a friend that donated all of his old and unused pc gear to me a few years ago. Included in the group was a Lian Li PC-60B Plus II. I cut a hole in the top for a 120mm exhaust fan and a hole on the side for a 200mm intake, in addition to the factory front 120mm intake and rear 120mm exhaust fans. I'm still using it now with my AMD Ryzen 7 3800X build, and I really love the case. The side fan is great for keeping the 2 video cards and cpu supplied with fresh air. The black aluminum and green LED fans really make this case stand out!
Side fan cutouts were a very common mod back in the day. Great to hear that case has gotten a second life!
I spent $149.95 for an aluminum Lian Li case back in the early 2000s. 1st thing I bought for it was a side window kit.
I was watching Userlandia when he only had 47 subscribers.
Thanks for watching. :)
@@kefkafloyd I ordered a WT-01L from evercase in the UK. Not an every day thing you see nowadays. It will be the best Ryzen 9 sleeper ever
I find myself using older and older cases as time goes on since newer cases are removing features that I want. For example, I have a SATA hotswap tray installed in the 5.25" optical drive bay on my main rig. It has support for a 3.5" and a 2.5" drive, which is great for archiving and for dual booting without having to mess with the Windows loader. More and more cases are coming out without any of those bays AND they are supporting fewer and fewer 3.5" hard drives installed internally at the same time.
The Fractal Define series still has support for lots of drives and a 5 1/4 inch bay, at least.
@@userlandia That's the case I'm using now!
My first proper PC case was a Lian Li aluminium which housed my P-III system I had proudly built from second-hand parts. Now, in 2024, I am still using a modern aluminium Lian Li case which is immaculate: the O11 Air mini
I have 8 old silver aluminum MG alloy (2 side windows and 1 top window are plastic) mid tower cases that supported 3 floppy drives in front from around 2002 (brand name was super flower sf-201)(7 of them are still working with linux but I do not use them any more bec they have only 1 gb of memory each, I just use them as tables). I remember the 8 super flower aluminum sf-201 cases were maybe about $75 each. I probably used these from around 2002 to 2014 (I used them for about 10 years before I decided to just use them as tables).
I have an old antec lanboy silver aluminum case with plastic side window that was never used (it is almost mid tower size and can handle atx motherboards just like a mid tower case, it was about $100, released in 2003, supported 2 floppy drives).
In 2014, I assembled a better pc using lian li pc-10na (a for silver, b for black) mid tower case that was 32 gb memory and 1 tb ssd. I leave it on 24x7 for 9 years and so far, it is still working. The lian li pc-10na case was about $100 in 2014 (it was released in 2013). I have not had a need to assemble a new pc for 9 years already so I am sad to hear that lian li no longer makes mid tower aluminum cases. Just waiting for my 2014 pc to blow up before assembling a new pc. I am very careful in assembling pcs bec I have anti static rubber mat (about $50) for the parts, anti static red material mat i put over my carpet, anti static wrist straps, anti static gloves, and I must have done something right since my computer has lasted 9 years, so far.
Lian Li still makes full tower aluminum cases.
I still have two lian Li casa :) a Koolance pc3-426bk and a PC-A04A silver matx case.
Wow, what a bargain. As a modern Lian Li fangirl, I would love to have an aluminium case like that. Just for the fun.
As our PCs get larger and heavier, maybe the weight saving properties of aluminum will come back in fashion again...
Lian-Li is still going strong. I guess the days of the brushed aluminum everywhere have gone but my O11 Dynamic XL does have a brushed aluminum strip on the front at least. I used to really want one of these older cases but never had the money to buy one back then...
Yeah, the cases that are sold today are basically an outgrowth of Lancool. The 011 is a nice case for watercooling!
@@kefkafloyd I have an aircooled system and it's pretty great for that too thanks to how much airflow you can get going from 4 different sides of the case.
I have a Kingwin clone of the Lian-Li PC-60. I used it as my main gaming rig case since about 2006 up till 2012, then it became my file server. My file server has since moved to an equally ancient Raidmax Quantum case with 9 5.25" drive bays (clusters of 3 with each sporting a 120mm fan and mesh front panels) and the Kingwin just houses a spare Intel 3rd gen backup PC.
Kingwin... that's a name I've not heard in a long time. I think they're out of the case market completely these days.
I still use my old Lancool K7, with modern hardware. The quality of older cases (depending on brand of course), is SO MUCH better than the new garbage.
Nice find!
Bring back 5 1/4 bays!
Bring back aluminum cases!
'Twas 2002... 18 Years old.... First year in college. I bought my first Lian-Li, a beige PC-60 and put an Asus A7V333 and an Athlon XP 2100+, I picked up a Black PC-65B in late 2005 and rocked that case until 2020! I picked up a Lian Li O11 Dynamic XL ROG... lol. Lian Li for life.
You can't spell Life without Li!
Great quality for being such a young channel ! Audio, video, cuts & you event went all the way and efforts with adding timestamps. Pretty amazing; best wishes from Germany!
Thanks!
great content, glad to find someone new to watch
Glad to hear it!
Great video, subscribed!
Thanks!
i sitll have my old lian li 6089 case with window side panel, been thinking of ways to make a buiild on it without haveing to mod it much, it was such a clean looking case in its time and still today it looks so elegant, and i have an 011 and various corsair cases and satill find that old lian li to be so much stylish an premium feeling
I put my PC into a Lian Li PC65 case I found on the side of the road. I assumed it was like any other case from the early 2000s with average looking components inside. It has performed well and while I sacrifice cooling efficiency, I have disconnected 5.25" and 3.5 in floppy drives in for the humor and I have a hotswap drive bay for homelab applications. The nice thing about it is that it is wide enough to fit my giant Noctua heatsink which hopefully compensates for all the airflow obstructions. Although I used them, I didn't realize the motherboard tray and PSU mount were somewhat unique to this case. Needless to say, I certainly took it for granted before I saw this video about my case and others like it. I'm shocked a humble PC case like it warranted a video with such high production value, yet here I am watching it from that very computer, having saved this component from the e-waste recyclers.
You saved a good case from the scrappers!
I wanted a k7b in 2006, but in 2007 I purchased my first brand new custom build and had a strict $500 budget, thanks paypal, I ended up getting a Cooler Master centurion 5 for $49, a case still housing my secondary/media PC. What really helped with airflow in it is the 3x5.25" drive bay to 4x3.5" converter, it had a 120m fan preinstalled, however completely blocked off by the outer filter. I removed all that and reinstalled the mesh 5.25 covers and fixed all that. Just needs usb3 and I'd be happy and its easy to get, I'm just cheap.
The Centurion wasn't a bad case at all, so I think you made out all right.
I had a pc70 with a phase charger that sat under it, matched the main case.
I'm sitting here with a Thermal take Tai-Chi in perfect condition. The most aluminium case ever made and it's insane how much it would cost today if just released
I like these old Lian-li's so much I bought a fair few of them wayback when they were still new! I still have them and will never ever sell them. My favorite was the PC60 and PC65! I have four of these. Then I bought two more newer versions. At some point lian-li decided to change things a bit! I am sure the metal is thinner?
Four? Lucky! Everybody should have at least one old Lian Li. They still look gorgeous even twenty years later.
24:53 I finally retired my 2003 case (some random Chinese brand I bought at the local PC store) in late 2018 - I thought I was a badass having 4 (yes 4!) 80mm intakes and 2 80mm exhaust fans...The final build in that case was an Athlon X4 64 with a GTX460. And yes, it sounded like a jet taking off. Oh those were the days.
I have a similar Lian Li case (with a 4-3-5 drive bay configuration, and the door down the bottom only having two USB ports and nothing else). It's probably the oldest part of my computer. Everything else has been replaced at least three times.
I've actually had the idea of a case where the front is all 5.25" drive bays so you can reconfigure it to your heart's content by swapping around modules myself (though with a focus on a desktop form factor, rather than a tower). Nice to see an actual manufacturer also had it, and quite surprising that it was the manufacturer of my own case that was the one to have it. The thing to go in front of the floppy and optical drives was not one that occurred to me. Probably because I'm happy enough with black and silver on my own case.
When you were criticising the button module, you missed a key point that I criticise my own case for: the reset button is too small to press with a finger. You have to poke it with a pen instead. Also, the power light is really damn bright. I keep it covered up on my own case.
I think Lian Li introduced the "beauty covers" around this time. They usually didn't come with the PC-60 style cases, though.
I've never had much trouble hitting the reset button on these cases, but its small size/concave shape/difficult to press nature is definitely an intentional move by Lian Li. Soft power was prominent at this time and power buttons would bring up a "would you like to shut down?" dialogue, while Reset was still an immediate thing. Preventing accidental resets was a noble idea. Concave buttons are always a little divisive though. I think Fractal got it right-it's smaller and slightly recessed, but it's not concave, so it's easier to push.
And yeah, Lian Li used some darn bright LEDs at this time.
I had a PC-V1000 but I had to get rid of it because it resonated from my hard drives, a droning sound that came straight out of Quake. I later got a PC-7B where I mounted the HD bracket on top of a piece of an old rubber mouse mat. I also put sticky rubber mats on the side panels. Otherwise, they would rattle. Nowadays, with solid-state storage, the vibration/resonance would be less of an issue but it definitely was a pain back then.
Another issue was that they were late to embrace larger diameter cooling fan sizes. Plus the included fans were pretty bad considering the case price.
I still use a PC 767 from 2005 for my main workstation (5950X, 1080ti, etc.) and i still like the looks, its built quality (way above most of the recent AL cases on the market, the front door is 3mm thick, top is 2.5mm, sides dont flex at all, that thing is heavier than most modern steel cases) and the 10 5.25" bays give it lots of flexibility. it was also one of the first cases with a 120mm fan on the rear to exhaust hot air, instead of the puny 80mm ones. so its still okayish for modern hardware together with 3 120mm front intake fans behind my hotswap cages. also, dead silent at idle load and an nh-d15 fits easily. this thing is so modular!
i might mod this thing in the future, all those real estate up front with the drive bays just calls for throwing two huge radiators into it. it would fit an alphacool 200x400mm rad each side blowing outwards. this would be so fun.
You're on to something here, the PC-767 is basically a slightly wider version of this case with an inverted ATX layout and a door. It's so rare to find these lian li cases without mods that I would try to keep it stock, but on the other hand they were literally made to be modded. TBH I can't think of something more 2005 than putting big honkin' radiators in that case.
@@userlandia i know, i am on the lookout for a second 767 or at least the sidepanels before i cut mine to pieces so i could rebuild it again if i wanted to. but so far i nothing usable surfaced. i am not in a hurry though, it does fine on air for the current hardware i have in it :)
Lian Li cases: always stylish! Great find!
(I wish I'd never gotten rid of my Lian Li case in the mid-00s... sure, it was beige, but I bet if the plastic was black, the design of the front would still hold up today!)
It also just re-dawned on me that a friend gave me his old build that got him through grad school... and it is in a black Lian Li aluminum case!
I got the PC-61 black from 2000's =)
I had one and sold it... miss it everyday....
I've just found a Cooler Master Wave Master in silver. I transferred a Packard Bell Windows 98 setup into it. I'm not using any of the included fans, and have removed most of them. I'm thinking about putting some Noctua in there with a fan hub as there are no headers on the motherboard. But with one of the front drive bays used for swappable hard drives, it can be any version of DOS based Windows or just pure DOS.
I found a Lian Li PC-P50 some years back in black that now has a Windows XP setup in it. These old cases are really surprising with the features they had back then, long before they became more commonplace.
It amused me when you said that people who had these cases moved on to Fractal Design Define cases. I have the R5, 6, and 7 and these cases don't look out of place next to them.
I still love my old lian li aluminum case, partly due to the red flames my friend added unexpectedly one day and the fan I added to the top (thanks to my dremel). It still has my ancient pc, ~7 hdds, some sort of a very fancy solid copper heat sink, and an echo gina24 ISA sound card inside. Everyone said that aluminum was the way to go because of its better cooling properties than the steel and plastic designs of the time.
As we all know, the flames make the computer go faster. 👍
Still a Lian Li fan running an O11 Dynamic. But that said I am forced to run a CDROM drive externally given these new cases dont have the 5 1/2" bays. The inner modder in me is now designing a custom case. Hope to get to an early prototype by Feb next year
Complimenti un ottimo video!
I miss the days when Lian Li made their cases out of premium materials. They used to only make all-aluminum cases that were lightweight and very high quality. They moved manufacturing from Taiwan to China and stopped making aluminum cases. Now they use heavy, cheap steel. They still make nice cases, but they are far from the "brushed aluminum works of art" they were known for.
Sadly... Nothing matches the old Lian Li quality. People that haven't experienced it will never understand what was lost.
BTW, Lian Li basically perfected the aluminum case by around 2009, and all your concerns on 6077 no longer existed.
Nice video! I used a black anodised Lian Li aluminium case for a good 5 to 6 years before I finally sold it for around $20. I initially paid $200 for it. And kept it around for at least 2 to almost 3 generations of PC builds because I liked the case so much. Even though it didn't have great airflow, it was light, much lighter than steel PC cases, and aluminium didn't rust. Which was the huge reason I could use it for that many years before finally deciding to part with it.
I could see that a lot of effort was put into making this video, maybe you could consider splitting up such videos into multiple parts in the future, and make them into a series of shorter, 10 minute videos instead? It would make it easier to watch as we wouldn't need to commit too much time to complete each video.
You know, "It doesn't rust" is a pretty important feature for some people that I hadn't even thought about.
I've had two Lian LI cases, they may actually still be somewhere in the basement. The first one actually had a cheap feeling power button. Switched to another brand with my last desktop, but my next might be a Lian Li again. Some of the newish designs look interesting.
Nice.. I'm looking for this case for my P4 build. I may find one someday.
I love this video! I am rocking the Lian Li A05 Silver for about 12 years now, bought it new. I love the brushed aluminum and styling. You sure scored heavy at the Goodwill. Please post a follow up what you did with this case.
I still have yet to acquire the parts to build that mid-aughts XP system in it. Some day...
Just bought a pair of SATA enclosures and they came with a PC-76 for free so I guess I’m building something in it
Interesting. I bought a Lian-Li PC-A17 case (it also has 9 bays) in 2009 and have built three computers in it, the last one a couple of years ago with modern tech. Wrote an article about it to my homepage/blog. I only had to modify the USB connectors a bit (I now have USB 3.0 connectors in front panel) and cover the obsolete firewire port, but other than that I didn't even think the case itself is somehow obsolete. Works well. And the aluminium actually does help with the cooling: my PSU doesn't have a fan. The case of the PSU is one big heatsink. When it's in contact with the case, it really conducts heat to the case.
Yeah, the only way to have the case help with cooling is to have hot parts actually touch it.
I had a PC-60 for a few years. The downfall was the lack of room for long graphics cards like the 8800 GTX. I was little irate over that as I spent $200+ CDN on that case back in 2003.
I've owned 3x PC-60 (still own one), 2x PC-201 (have both still, though ones heavily modified and disassembled atm) and a PC-V2000+, as well as many other old classic cases..I've had to stop myself from buying more lol, just need the hardware to fill them all up now 😔
I have a 3 window Super Flower 201s, which is very similar topologically to the pc 60-X but unfortunately doesn't have 9 5 1/4" bays.
I can safely say the 5 80mm Molex fans are surprisingly quiet, even with no fan controller or anything.
I got it at a flea market for $5 as a whole socket 754 full amd system and it was surprisingly little dust inside, but I could tell it was used extensively because of dust and hair build up in the filtration system when I took it home and opened it up.
That Sayed, It might lack AIO support and the cable management is abysmal, but its just got much mojo! I love having a case that stands out among a world of tempered glass unicorn puke rave boxes.
Five bucks for that system was a steal! Everything old is new again. It's funny how back then we spent so much time modding cases to add windows, add lights, put in watercooling, etc. and now that stuff comes stock, we want the old stock look of solid panels. Then again I buy Fractal boxes which are the "stealthiest" cases you can buy today.
I have one of these. A G-50. First case I ever bought. Smartest choice I ever made. (No weird fans 120 only)
Use it for my current PC. it was a model with the vented panels. With a couple 3D printed improvements I filled those vents with 4 120mm fans.
The brushed aluminum is timeless, but precious few of these had ventilation sufficient for a modern powerful PC dumping 500 watts of heat into them.
I've been skulking in the shadows looking for another candidate. But it's gonna require luck. Or a frankly ridiculous amount of modification. Like if it's panel modding time I need access to a CNC router. Drill press won't cut it.
I'd actually feel bad buying an unsuitable case and modding it up when some nerd probably wants to build a period accurate system in there. It'd be in better hands than a madman with fancy ideas and a drill.
I had the PC-61 (the PC-60) in black and ran an AMD-FX60 with 2 x GeForce 7900GT's in SLI - all water-cooled using a 5¼" bay reservoir and an external radiator. My son had an Antec Lanboy which though they were both aluminium, the Lanboy felt like a coke can by comparison. I've owned a number of Lian Li cases over the years and currently have 2 x Lian Li O11D XL's in service.
The lightness of these things was stunning. (less so with all the modern crap I've shoved in mine lol)
But my friend sat on my case for multiple days at a LAN. Not a big dude but hey the thing can withstand 160 pounds. That's pretty cool.
I had a number of the mATX and iTX Lian Li cases in the 00's and early 10's. Always striking to look at, if somewhat impractical! I still have a PC-Q11, though it's very much end of life now. The case would scratch if you so much as looked at it funny, the screw holes are all completly worn away and the frame is bent in a couple of spots.
A 'unique' manufactuer back in the day, but now they just make the same stuff as everyone else.
It's sort of like how car manufacturers are making SUVs/CUVs... they're what people want and what sells, unfortunately. The 011 series is at least something different, but other companies are copying it now.
As a retail store owner, I despised building in Lian Li cases. they were rickety, bulky, ugly, and not build friendly. They seem to have the same fan-boy niche that Asus motherboards had (which were also awful, frequent DOA, picky about RAM compatibility etc) It would almost make you think these manufacturer's were paying off review sites to get their names out there. In-Win, CasEdge, Cooler Master and Fractal Design all made far superior quality and ease of build cases, along with the benefit of actually being cheaper.
I'd take that bet on there being some pay-to-play going on back in the day, but the sites I read (Ars Technica, Anandtech) had enough integrity that I could trust them. I fully admit to being in Fractal's court, because once I bought them I never looked back. Before that I had a string of Antecs and InWins. But the early-aughts LANner in me can't help but have a soft spot for these Lian Li boxes despite their flaws. It's sort of like the car you always wanted in High School, and then you finally get it and realize that the steering's a bit off, the suspension's bouncy, and the interior's got some rattles that drive you crazy. But man, does it look cool...
I still really regret selling my first lian li case. it's long enough ago that I forget what it was even called. I still have my A70F and 20 PC7 FN's though. In fact my latest desktop build (7950x/4070TI Super) is in the 7FN.
I had no idea their box graphic design was so terrible! since I was a poor teenager when these things were the hot, droolworthy thing that everyone dreamed of being able to include in their latest build. Ultimately everything else mattered more than the case.
I did see them occasionally and was very jealous, I'd happily have one today and it makes me wonder why they haven't brought a classic design like this back. No need for 5.25" bays any more of course but something similar would be cool.
That's pretty cool. I want a stainless steel computer case.
5:13 Defiler cameo!
ive got a V-1000 and a V1100, they are great cases for the time and still beat most modern cases for quality.
At least Lian Li was willing to give inverted ATX a try with the V-series. It was an idea that I wish was more popular.
Had a Lian Li PC 60 (with plexiglass side) and PC 70, sadly lost both is a fire :(
My condolences :(
27:40 If the exhaust fans were aligned with the intake fan, the air flow would go straight throught the box, so some places would not receive fresh air and would get hot.
You NEED those turbulences.
Please forgive the long reply. :) You're not wrong in that you want movement of air throughout the entire case. The following is more context to what I've written; odds are you probably know most of this already and can probably skip it, but maybe others can consider it cut content. I didn't get too into the weeds on positive vs negative flow and overall fluid dynamics because it would have been a huge digression in an already long post/show/video.
The kind of turbulence I'm referring to is the bad kind caused by interference (which is also noisy). Yes, having some moving air in all parts of the case is helpful, but it's even _more_ helpful to have the air moving where you want it to go, aye? To be more precise, you want directed movement of fresh air air front to back, not recirculation of stagnant case air. Obviously you don't want one exhaust and one intake that are both in line that won't give enough coverage through the case, but this case's stock cooling setup is merely okay, not great. In a case like this, which is by default a negative pressure setup, having the lower intake is fine because it directs cooler air towards the lower components where the exhaust fans won't help much. But it would cool even better if it had more intake with larger fans that moved more air (and one larger exhaust versus the three 80mm exhausts).
Hence requiring multiple fans in multiple locations with a clear, unobstructed path to move fresh air (or very high static pressure to overcome obstruction). Or using air ducts, as I've used in some server builds. The pros and cons of positive vs. negative pressure (and the intricacies of setting them up) are beyond the scope of the video, but "straight through" airflow in the era of these cases was more about clearing the path. That's still true today, but we're in a lot better place with case designs even in the basic entry level. Regardless, a single intake fan is a compromise anyway-one on the top front would be more beneficial to the CPU, while on the bottom it would be better for the GPU/other components. Ideally there would be multiple, but in the era of 5 1/4 drives it was more difficult to achieve that. And that's not even including what the fans on the CPU and GPU are doing, ,but that's a whole other set of variables that impacts the overall fluid movement of the case's system.
So yes, if you only have one intake and one exhaust, putting them in a diagonal is the best compromise, but it's still not an optimal setup. This case includes a chimney exhaust which is probably a bad idea in general, but if you're going all-in on negative pressure, it's not the worst thing you can do.
i love my Lian Li PC-V3000WX TG
I think the V3000 series was the end of the line. A very good note to go out on for the all-aluminum build.
HI have the same model in black came of ebay 9 bay model need it for the tape back up drives abd all them
funny disc drives like the sony DDCD ide PD 2.6GB RAM
I still have my old Lian-Li case that I bought for a build back in the period between 2000 and 2010. I am not using it but I could if I chose to do so. The only issue that I have with it is that I would love to be able to switch out the ports on the lower front of the case.
The port assembly is just screwed into the case, and there are USB 3.0 panels that you could swap in, I bet.
@@userlandia No, in the old Lian-li case I have I would need to drill out the rivets and replace the who bezel in that area. I would have to do that in order to get rid of the two types of firewire connection there and replace them with USB of some sort.
Ah, rivets? That's unfortunate. The PC-6077's is attached by screws, but you'd have to replace the whole assembly and not individual ports. Lian Li made cases with that type of port assembly for years, so I would think a newer one could be swapped in.
I still have a lian li A10 under my desk lol. It did house my modern build and was so easy to build in.
Edit: I loved the fact that Lian Li tried to imitate the Apple designs back in the day
The V series cases were really popular! I actually think the black V-series looked better than the silver ones.
Yep, the current case market caters Only to the "gAmEr" aesthetic with zero external drive bays and RGB rainbow puke coupled with sheets of tempered glass. Very few cases are still being made with external bays, and I feel that we desperately need case manufacturers to get a grip and start offering real cases with external bays again at good prices so that we're not having to try and find questionable offerings on places like eBay or Craig's List.
Interestingly enough, Fractal has put a 5 1/4 inch bay on their new Pop cases. The R series still has an option for one as well (along with spinning rust focused bay setups and steel side panels). I had cut a whole section of opinions about the decline of the storage-focused case market from the written version, which would probably make for a good post on its own.
I wanted a Lian-Li case back then but I had to settle for a Lian-Li mousepad. Problem was brushed aluminium was terrible for a mousepad as the friction was way too high and it made a noise that felt similar to nails on a chalkboard. I quickly changed it for an Everglide mousepad.
Yeah, metal mousepads, oof. It sounds like a neat collectible, though!
The hotness back then was the all-glass Icemat. Fun fact: the Icemat was the product that put SteelSeries on the map.
I have a Lian Li PC-60 from late 2000 or very early 2001.
I modded one the drive bay covers to act as a hidden CD drive cover as they hadn't released the 5.25" cd cover at the time.
I've been considering doing a current build in it. How prescient of you. =) lol
Or maybe I'll get a Lancool 216
Hey, if you can keep it vintage, keep it vintage I say!
I still use a Lian Li PC-A70 circa 2007 full tower for my main rig. Why would you need anything else?
In our mad era of ever-growing GPU sizes, the A-70's PCI card support bracket might make a comeback...
Is target have the Onkyo though
I’ve got one that’s been upgraded four times over 20+ years … still takes at ATX PSU …
Today I Did Buy one of a Retro Classics new and maybe one of the heaviest full an Aluminum case that ever was made a Zalman Z Machine GT-1000 sad that cases like this are no more made
Always loved the unique side panel of that case that lets you open up the drive bay area without removing the entire panel.
I miss when cases used to have 4 - 5 5'25inch bays.... my new Define R5 has only 2 which just isnt enough... anybody knows any new case, with modern features, which has like 1x140mm fan at the front, while keeping at least 4 bays?
The Phanteks Enthoo Primo and Silverstone Temjin are your only choices, unless you're willing to look at server chassis.
im still using a old lian li case (PC-60F)
Great storytelling. Lian Li where always to expensive for me and these even more expensive.
@userlandia you should do a i7-8086K build on it..!
Hey ist kompatibel for E-ATX Mainboard danke
There aren't any standoff locations for E-ATX boards. There's certainly room on the tray for boards longer than standard ATX, but you may run into mechanical interference along the tall drive cage. I wouldn't recommend this case for EATX boards.
That's my local Goodwill!
You might see me passing through on Saturdays after a spirited drive down Bush Hill Road...
@@userlandia I only really go on tuesdays or on fridays. I only go for the cell phones and PalmPilots I find there.
29:00 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Jonsbo is the replacement for the aluminium Lian Li cases.
tu150 best lan case EVER!