Lian Li PC-402A Review
Posted on January 4, 2003

Obligatory useful bag o'bits. Don't worry - you don't have to use them all.

The motherboard in place on its tray. In this case, an EPIA M 9000.

To the left, the headers for the power switches and indicator LEDs. For compatibility with different motherboards, the USB, speaker and Audio cables are seperated into their components (ground, +5V etc.), each with their own header. The USB sockets are USB 2.0 compatible, so will work with the EPIA M. Make sure you haven't lost that EPIA manual.

In addition to the internal fan on the PSU, there is a seperate 60mm grilled fan with motherboard connector at the back of the case. For an EPIA based system this isn't really necessary - luckily it doesn't have to be connected.

Fitting the hard drive into place. Another drive could be fitted above instead of a floppy drive without too much trouble.

The motherboard tray back in the case, CDROM fitted and cables attached.

Conclusion

Lian Li have created a case suitable for a wide range of motherboards, not just Mini-ITX - Shuttle owners will be taking note. The additional drive bays give greater flexiblity than smaller cases, and the brushed aluminium finish and translucent window looks excellent. The lack of PSU as standard will be the major problem for most purchasers - particularly as smaller sized and capacity PSUs often take some finding, and can be noisy. The fiddly USB connectors will add a few minutes build time and frustrate some people. A Molex pass-through connector will allow people to use 2 hard drives and 2 CDROM/DVD drives. We would have also liked Firewire connectors for our EPIA M. But these minor niggles aside, this is a beautiful looking case, and a fine addition to the growing range of Mini-ITX compatible cases. We don't sell it at the Mini-ITX store yet - but we'll definitely be looking into it!

Case kindly provided by Lian Li Industrial Co. Ltd, Taiwan