Aluminum Server Case Review

Anonymous Coward writes: "Hi guys, Here is a review of the Lian Li PC626, which is a server case made entirely out of aluminium. Unex from Belgium :)" Or aluminum, which is the only proper spelling, of course. Are these cases actually worth the premium price? I may be having heat problems (for the first time) with our latest PC purchase, so I'm suddenly more interested in cooling...

CoolerMaster

[Apreche]

The best computer cases in the worlds IMO are available at www.coolermaster.com. They're so pretty. They have extra fans, alluminum body, and USB in the front, which is great for my gravis gamepad pro USBs. They're also extremely roomy and easy to work with. The trouble is finding a place that sells them, because the company doesn't sell them direct, and they have distributors in Japan and Europe, but not the US. They aren't all too expensive either. I personally reccomend the ATC-201 for anyone who needs a full tower and worries about heat. The fan in the top of the cast helps SO much.

Re:aluminum ?

[Keju]

The English chemist Sir Humphry Davy who discovered the element derived the name from alumina, which was taken from the French tanning mineral "alum".

Sir Humphrey first called it alumium, then aluminum, and finally aluminium. Somehow the Americans ended up calling it by the intermediate name and it stuck.

In Belgium

[Slef]

Or aluminum, which is the only proper spelling, of course.

Actually, aluminium is the only proper spelling in Belgium: in French, in Flemish, and even in German. For once we all agree on something!

Re:Overheating indicator

[aidoneus]

I think you're confusing Al with Mg (Magnesium). Take a look at the earlier story with the videos of chemical reactions for Mg burning while embedded in a block of dry ice...

Lian Li Cases

[NormAtHome]

You can easily pay over $16,000 for a high end dual cpu Compaq Proliant server, $600 for a fabulous server case is not that bad. I've built three systems using the Lian Li PC-60 USB case and I've never been happier with any case. The newer model has an internal bracket that mounts five hard drives right behind two front mounted fans with dust filter and four front mounted USB ports for motherboards like the Asus A7A266 which has headers on the board for the four ports. It's an expensive case (now $159 from Directron.Com) but it's a joy to work with and it does keep the components cool.

Slashdot the manufacturer

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.lian-li.com/new-pc/PC626ENG.htm [lian-li.com]

Supermicro cases

[acidblood]

For most server needs, take a look at the Supermicro [supermicro.com] cases. I own the now-classic SC-750 and have no complaints about it.

Yeah, I know they're just OEMs, the SC-750 is actually made by some other company (which I can't recall now), but anyway if it was picked by Supermicro then it must be very high quality.

Also, Supermicro always bundles high-quality power supplies, an increasingly important point with the powerhogs that are Dual Athlons and Xeons. In my case, the Sparkle FSP300-60GT -- hasn't failed yet (and the load's high on it, believe me, plus it's 24/7), and should be enough power for most needs. Unless you're building the ultimate peltier/watercooling rig.

I have one of these

[Azog]

Mine is one of the medium-high tower models. It's a really nice case, but yes, it was awfully overpriced. And mine didn't even come with a power supply - by the time you add the price of a premium power supply, it gets really spendy. However, I don't reget the purchase.

I got sick of all those garbage $50 cases made out of stamped metal with the razorblade sharp inside edges, cheaply riveted together.

The Lian Li case looks good (especially with Tux, Gnu, and Linux stickers on it!). More importantly, it fit my motherboard perfectly (a dual Slot 1 Tyan) and the drive cage at the bottom is PERFECT for a small RAID setup. I've got four 60 GB Maxtors stacked in there, and with the twin drive cooling fans right in front of them they don't even get warm to the touch. (I have a lot of MP3 and OGG files...) The cooling works well for the twin 800 Mhz CPUS as well.

The whole case comes apart with thumbscrews. You can pull out the power supply, the motherboard, all the drive cages... very quick and easy.

Best of all, even with all those fans it isn't too loud. The twin cooling fans on the front have a three-way switch that lets you adjust the speed (and noise) as appropriate for your cooling needs. I have mine at max speed, and I still have no trouble sleeping next to it.

PC60 not bad

[germann]

I've got both the PC60 and PC70. The former is a midi for home users, whilst the latter is a big tower sold as server case. Both are carefully designed, but I definitely prefer the PC60. It has a removable mobo tray, thumb screws (which both the PC70 has not) and on the whole is really a lovely piece of pc case: lots of bays, no sharp edges etc. etc.
Concerning the cooling - well with all those fans it should be allright, and until now I've experienced no problems with my Athlon 1.33, GeforceGTS2 etcetera.
Apart from that, I myself can't really measure the difference to other cases. Of course both cases emit some noise (because of the fans), which is tolerable at least for the PC60. As you know, both good cooling and little noise are hard to get, so if your priority lies on the latter you might want to try another case.
On the whole, I'd recommend - for the average user - the PC60, whereas the PC70 is not designed for regular hardware fiddling and a bit too loud.
Wether the PC60 is worth the extra money ? Well, I don't know. But it sure is a nice case.

review of 4 Al-cases

[paulbeasd]

There is a review of 4 cases
- Coolermaster ATC-200, Coolermaster ATC-201-SX, Lian Li PC-60, Lian Li PC-61 -
in dutch and in english at:
http://www.mcdos.nl/consumenten/paginas/nieuws/c oo lerkasten.htm
(from: GamePC, 21 April, 2001).

one quote:
"The ATC-200 still stands as one of the best aluminium cases on the market,
despite being more than a year old."
So, by now, it is at least one and a half year old allready!

Actually

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole case is aluminum. The drives dissipate a lot of thermal energy thru the case as they heat up the brackets and other nearby parts of the case. The motherboard doesn't have much of a thermal connection to the case however, unless you use some sort of material under the motherboard, filling the space between it and the case.

Re:Al ?

[1337 $14X0r]

FYI, Steel does *NOT* conduct heat better. It is heavier and cheaper, and it is used in 95% of the computer cases out there. You'll never see a steel heatsink in your life - Aluminum, Copper, and Silver all do the job much better.

If you look around that (or any other) overclocking site, you'll find more cooling info than you could shake a stick at. In fact, I'm installing [overclockersonline.com] [overclockersonline.com] such a system as we speak.

More Lian Li reviews

[Daniel Rutter]

My reviews of other Lian Li cases, in reverse chronological order:

PC-76 server case [dansdata.com]

PC-70 full tower [dansdata.com]

PC-31 mini-tower [dansdata.com]

PC-60 midi-tower [dansdata.com]

Obligatory Karma Whoring...

[shayne321]

Ars [arstechnica.com] has a full review of the ATC-201 located here [arstechnica.com].

Shayne

Lian-Li PC+61 USB

[jgrumbles]

Since the articled called the effectiveness of aluminum cases into question. Before I put my new Athlon system in my $200 Lian-Li case I ran a Q3 Demo loop and some math program that attempts to kill the cpu ;) In the traditional beige case made out of whatever with 8 fans strategically placed it maintained a system temp of about 44 F and the cpu about 48 F. I then switched it over to the Lian-Li PC+61 USB case (black aluminum, very sexy) and the system temp is now 37 F and cpu is 46 F on full load. So they do have their uses, but I mainly got mine because it was black.

Re:aluminum ?

[Drakin]

Actually, it was soon after the united States became independant Franklin and Webster got together and started to change the language.

Thankfully Webster kept Franklin from doing what he wished, which was dropping all the silent letters in words. Then things would have been really screwed up.

'Though, we'd have more literate Americans.

(And I'm thinking my karma's going to take a beating from that...)

Check these links out

[DABANSHEE]

Lian Li Website [lian-li.com]

Lian Li PC-70 aluminium full tower computer case [dansdata.com]

Lian Li PC-76 server case [dansdata.com]

Lian Li PC-60 computer case [dansdata.com]

Coolermaster ATC-201SX alloy case [coolermaster.com]

Lian Li HDD Caddie Page [lian-li.com]

RH-620 Alloy HDD Caddie [lian-li.com]

RH-600 Alloy HDD Caddie [lian-li.com]

RH-29 Alloy HDD Caddie [lian-li.com]

Aluminium vs. Aluminum: The Real Story

[BigusDickus]

Sorry guys, I love my country but the Brits have us on this one. Here's the story:

Before the 20th century, aluminium, while very common in the earth's crust, was extremely rare in it's metallic form. The reason was that no one could figure out a cheap way to convert it from ore form (bauxite) to a metal. Once a process was discovered to do this cheaply, new companies started up refine and manufacture aluminium products.

One of these companies, the Aluminium Corporation Corporation of America, forerunner of Alcoa, sent an order out to a printer for stationary, forms, etc. Somewhere along the line, someone dropped the 'i' and everything wound up getting printed up as "aluminum". The company decided, since not that many people had ever heard of the stuff, to go with the new spelling instead of going through the expense of having everthing reprinted. There it is: a spelling mistake that got institutionalized (institutionalised for the Brits).

This is not unique: The national park up in Maine, Acadia, is called that because when the first maps were made of the park, the mapmaker dropped the r in Arcadia. The Park Service decided to just go with it instead of reprinting the maps.

Also, here's the reason we are not the United States of Columbia: A few years after Columbus landed in the New World, another Italian, Amerigo Vespucci, was running around Europe claiming he disovered the New World. German mapmakers (the best in the world at the time)had nothing else to go on and started making maps based on his descriptions. They then misspelled his name as America and that's what got put on all the maps.