Review: Lian Li PC37 - Chassis - HEXUS.net

Internal Features

The inside of this case is rather boring compared to other cases I’ve seen in the past. I mentioned before that Lian Li has a trend of using their idea of a removable hard drive rack throughout its range of cases. Unfortunately this trend hasn’t been carried on into the PC37. Within the removable hard drive racks, the hard disks are usually mounted in a vertical position. If this method was used within the PC37 there wouldn’t be space for the 1 x 3½ inch bay that is available for a floppy disk drive. None the less there is still space for 3 x 3½ inch devices. Also remember that there are plenty of products on the market such as removable HD racks that fit into the 5¼ inch bays. These will accept 3½ inch hard disks and also provide additional cooling which I think this case desperately needs.

When I first opened this case I noticed the space for the PSU was in a vertical position. After installing a motherboard, CPU and PSU I realised that the PSU is restricting airflow to the CPU. Since the PSU is in a vertical position it limits the height of the heatsink and fan that can be installed onto the motherboard. The vertical PSU could also cause trouble with some AGP graphics cards with large heatsinks.

A main feature that I always look out for when purchasing a computer case is to see if it has a removable motherboard tray. This is a brilliant idea that allows you to build the computer away from the computer case. The PC37 has 5 thumbscrews holding the removable motherboard tray in place. The thumbscrews provide quick and easy access to the motherboard; making upgrades a pleasant experience for all types of users.
When you remove the motherboard tray there used to be a connector that allowed you to unclip the power/reset buttons and LED’s. This saved a lot of time by eliminating the mess on to find out the correct pins to reconnect the headers too. I loved this on previous models but this is another feature that hasn’t been included within the PC37.

Most motherboards these days come with generally everything needed onboard. Onboard sound, graphics, LAN, RAID, etc. so the need for PCI cards is slowly drifting away. I guess this is one of the reasons why the Lian Li PC37 doesn’t have thumbscrews on the expansion slots. I’m also guessing this is a money saving method to reduce the price of the case.