3. The Case

3.1 Exterior

Exterior wise, the PC-9300 has a unique look to it. The PC-9300's exterior shell is made of anodized brushed aluminum. There are two 5.25" inch bays that are accessible via the front of the case. Looking at the front of the case, there is a very cool blue colored LED strip. When you turn on a system installed into this case, the LED strip will light up for a simple yet effective effect. There are also two USB ports accessible through the front. It's a shame that Lian Li doesn't offer a firewire port (IEEE 1394) or headphone/mic jack in the front - that would be a nice addition to future designs.

Front of the PC-9300

The rear of the case has your normal PCI slots and of course the motherboard port faceplate. You will find two grills for the two outtake fans located in the rear. These are 80mm fans and the only fans in the case aside from power supply fan.

Back of the case

The bottom of the case has four feet pads. These feet pads are similar to pads found underneath A/V equipment such as receivers. Since the front of the case does not have an intake fan, there are vents near the front on the bottom of the case. Air is drawn in through these vents and then pushed out through the two rear case fans.

Bottom Side	Another angle

The front faceplate/bezel of the case can be removed by unscrewing the top corners of the front of the case. Once removed, the entire front aluminum bezel comes right off. There is of course no reason to take it off except for the purpose of showing that you can do so in this review.

Removing the corner screw	Faceplate removed from the front
Back of the face plate	Front of the face plate (bezel)

Front of the case with faceplate removed

3.2 Interior

Getting to the interior was a bit of a pain. The shell took a little bit of prodding in order to get loosened. You have to slide the top of the case back and then push up to remove it. While sliding the top off, the sides were fairly snug against the interior frame. It would have been nicer if the top was not so tightly fitted to the case. However after a few openings and closings of the shell, it was definitely easier to get to the interior of the case (perhaps it was more practice on my part?).

Shell Removed	A look at the corner edge

Once inside the case, you see a fairly clean design. The front of the case has essentially two sets of drive enclosures that each hold a 5.25" bay and a 3.5" bay on top. The 3.5 inch drive bays are actually attached to the top of the 5.25" bay and can be removed via thumb screws. However in order for you to install a 3.5" drive that is accessible externally, you will need to mount the drive into a 3.5" mounting kit that is included with the box. The kit is then inserted into a 5.25" drive bay since only the 5.25" bays are externally accessible. The 5.25" drives are inserted at an angle since the front aluminum bezel of the case has a slight tilt as well. This is a nice touch but it does seem like a waste of space since the tilt of the drive takes up space that could have better used to store more internal drives IMHO. The 5.25" drive enclosures can also be removed by unscrewing two side screws. Getting the enclosure out is a bit of a pain since you will need a thin and long Philip screwdriver to reach the screw itself. You don't have to take out the screw but just loosen it. The enclosure then is able to slide out once the two sides are loosened. Each 5.25" enclosure can be separately removed from each other. The PC-9300 does not offer a great deal of storage space in general though since you are limited to two 5.25" drives. Keep that in mind if you plan on having a lot of hard drives or optical drives in your system. If you plan on putting two optical drives then you'd better forget about having an internal floppy drive. Not really a big deal since much work can be done via a CDRW nowadays but still something to consider.

Interior view of the case	Another angle

From the back

A look at the 3.5" bay	The 3.5" bay removed
The 5.25" bay exposed	Removing the 5.25" bay
The 5.25" bay	Another angle of it

The 3.5" mounting kit

The case itself holds a microATX motherboard which of course will limit your choices in motherboard options. However considering that the target audience will probably want a small system, using the microATX format made perfect sense. A good choice for an all integrated solution would be a board based on an nForce chipset since you get a great deal of functionality in the chipset integration. Other common microATX boards will use perhaps an Intel 815 or 845GL chipset.

The power supply is based on the SFX design specification and you will find power supplies between 150 to 200 watts only. This may be a concern if you had normal motherboards that would draw on a lot of power from the processor and PCI devices. However most microATX boards tend to be an all integrated solution and thus the SFX format power supplies should provide enough juice for your system. Consider that the Shuttle SS51G only uses a 200 watt P/S for its Pentium 4 setup, and you'll realize that the SFX power supply is good enough! My test case actually had a power supply installed but it looks like normally this case does not come with a power supply installed. This will increase the cost of a system designed using this case.

Power Supply next to the fans	Closeup of the SFX P/S

The two rear fans should be adequate for removing air within the case. No other case fans are found within the PC-9300 aside from the fan within the power supply.

Two rear fans

The case comes with your usual assortment of screws and cables found in most cases today. What was unusual though was the inclusion of aluminum bezel faceplates for different kinds of drives. These bezels are there to help you color match drives to the case thereby removing the need to get matching drives installed within your system. This is definitely a nice touch on Lian Li's part.

Accessories	Accessories opened up

Aluminum Faceplates

Interior wise, I did notice that some of the edges of the case were a bit sharper than I would like them to be. Though most of the corners are well rounded the edges themselves are a little sharp should you grab them with your hand and lift the case up that way. It's not too big of a deal but something to consider when putting together a system with the case.

3.3 Setup

I did not get a chance to install a motherboard and drive(s) into this case since I did not have a micro ATX case handy. However, the clean design of the PC-9300 shows that it shouldn't be difficult installing a microATX case. The only hard parts would be deciding where to install the drives. Setup should be a non issue here for most people.