Lian-Li takes a dragon sailing

LIAN-LI HAD MORE than enough goodies to make one happy at CES. Several were limited edition cases and several mainstream ones, but all were top notch.

Limited edition Sail case

The first one has been grabbing all the headlines, the PC-888 Sail case. It is big, blue, and a total rethinking of what a case should be. As with the rest of the Lian-Li cases, it is built like a tank, comes in anodized blue aluminum and has a unique outline.

They put in a couple of neat touches like turning the HDs 90 degrees and putting the PSU on top of the mobo, but nothing that hasn't been done before. Lian-Li also put a set of card readers on one side of the top, USB and ports on the other, and capped it with a mast. The only color available is anodized blue, and if you want one, get it now, there will only be about 1,000 made.

The top of a Dragon

Next up we have one called the PC-P50 aka the Dragon. Lian-Li did pretty well with the Spider case for AMD's Spider platform, so now that AMD has Dragon, they are going to sell one of those as well. This case is actually really nice, and features several things I have not seen anywhere else before.

The first bit is dual color anodization. The outside is black, the inside a dark red, it looks pretty good. The top pops off to reveal two140mm fans that vent outwards, those should cool things quite well, and there are cable holders strategically placed around to help airflow too. These are nothing really new, several others have done it before.

Card covers will never be the same

What is new is the card blank retention system. Normally that is not a cause for dropped jaws, but if you look at the ones above, you can see that Lian-Li did something really special here. It is not every day that you see cam locking pistons holding those annoying covers down. They work really well too, as do the tool-free optical drive bays. This is a very slick case, and should sell for $300 or less, but that is not set in stone yet.

From there, we move to a set of cousins, the PC-B71b and the PC-B70b. These are the next gen full tower cases, and have a new set of nifty details to warrant the title. The first thing is that the side panel has a rubber seal around the edge to lessen vibration and airflow. The drive cages have one master screw in them to allow them to pivot out, and everything is tool free.

The difference between the 70 and 71 is that the latter has fans lining the inside of the front cover to force air over the drives. If you are one of those people that has a case packed full of 1.5TB drives to keep your legally-purchased music and movie collection in, this might be the chassis for you. There is also a mid-tower version called the PC-B10b.

Mini-ITX gets some class

The last one we have is something that quite a few people have been looking for, a mini-ITX case that doesn't look like Gus from the local auto body shop made it with his pliers. Lian-Li made the PC-Q7 for that market, and to make things even better, it uses standard size components so you don't have to buy slim yet expensive everythings. Worth a look if you are making a media center. µ