Heavy Gear

Heavy Gear January 2002 • Vol.2 Issue 1 Page(s) 34 in print issue
Lian Li PC-60 USB

Lian Li is the manufacturer primarily responsible for bringing aluminum cases to the masses via their attractive pricing and widespread distribution. While not as poncy as Cooler Master's ATC-201, the PC-60 USB is far from being the poor man's alternative. It has great looks and the capacity to compete with server cases, and it only weighs 16.2 pounds.

Installing a Pentium 4/Athlon system is easy, thanks to the pull-out motherboard tray and thumbscrews, making every nook and cranny accessible. Housing four 5.25-inch and three 3.5-inch external drive bays and five 3.5-inch internal drive bays, the PC-60 is great if you plan to run a RAID setup with multiple drives. (You do have to rack the bays vertically, though.)

The PC-60 USB does come in a bit wide under your desk at 19.2 inches high x 8.2 inches wide x 17.7 inches deep, but because the corners are rounded, you will just get a bruising rather than draw blood if you bash your knees. And while we're under the desk, we should note that the PC-60 USB comes with four front USB ports, two more than the ATC-201, that hook up to your motherboard's USB pin-out header.

The PC-60 achieves cooling with three 80mm fans, including two filtered units up front. The third is a rear exhaust fan. There is no fourth fan, or "blow hole," on top. The fans are quite loud, but there is a three-speed control switch for these noisy blighters. If you are overclocking, use third gear for max cooling (and noise); otherwise, stay in first gear and save your ears.

For an extra $20, you can accessorize your PC-60 USB with a Plexiglas side-window. If you're not into that sort of thing, perhaps the better way to accessorize is the the optional front panel I/O gamer multiport ($45), which snugly replaces one of the external 5.25-inch front drive bays.

At $199 (not including PSU), Lian Li's offering is about $70 less and a close second to Cooler Master's ATC-201, but second nonetheless.

by Alex "Sharky" Ross

PC-60 USB

www.lian-li.com.tw