Lian Li PC-V354 review
Interior
Now that I've covered the exterior of the case it's time to get to business, but first eight tiny screws have to be removed to detach the left side panel.
The all-black interior is small but Lian Li did its best to make it as roomy as possible. There's support for Mini-ATX/Mini-ITX/Mini-DTX motherboards, up to five expansion cards, one external 5.25" device, up to seven 3.5" HDDs, two 2.5" SSDs, up to four fans (three included) and an oversized ATX power supply. Gamers will be pleased too, by default there's support for VGA cards of up to 235mm and if you remove the bottom HDD cage (which has room for 4 HDDs) you can install graphics cards of up to 350mm!
Here's the other end of the fan controller, it has four 3-pin headers to control the speed of your case fans.
The power supply is mounted vertically and rests on these two rails, they have a rubberized layer to prevent vibrational noise. The vertical mounting system conserves precious space.
These eight holes in the case's bottom can be used to install two 2.5" solid state disks. Another interesting design choice as it turns this otherwise "wasted" space into a valuable feature.
The rear has room for two fans - a 140mm model is mounted in the top panel to exhaust hot air from your CPU/GPU and the back panel has mounting holes for an optional 120mm fan. All fans have a 3-pin header as well as a 3-pin to Molex adapter so you're not forced to use the fan controller. The top fan is equipped with a fan guard to protect fingers and cables.
As I've mentioned earlier in this review, the right side panel is the motherboard plate. It makes the case more compact but the disadvantage is that it makes cable management a lot harder because there's no room to stuff unnecessary cables away. The motherboard spacers are fixed to the side panel.
Here's a closeup of the cable boom. It includes connectors for the I/O panel, the USB 3.0 connectors, and the three fans.
Added: December 20th 2010
Product reviewed: Lian Li PC-V354
Reviewer: Thomas De Maesschalck
Score: 8.5/10
Page: 4/6