Lian Li V352 review

Can anyone find one anywhere?

I've just had one turn up for my new work PC - its a nightmare! I had ordered the V351B, but my supplier screwed me around for over a month then gave me the V352 which I thought would be better...

• Swapping the hard drive cage over gives no advantage other than to make it impossible to to cable manage and put the hard drives further away from where the SATA ports normally are on the motherboard.
• The gap between the PSU and Optical bay is (I kid you not) less than 1 inch when you allow for the mounting flap on the optical that needs to push past (which I have no idea what it mounts to?) which means its almost impossible to use even with a modular PSU.
• The optical caddy has no cable holes anyway... I've managed to squeeze the power cable through the 5mm gap below the bottom bezel.
• Running the power cable down the side of the optical bay and then under the hard drive caddy is no small feat when you have mear mm's to play with.
• If you want to use the rear fan controller for the fans you can only plug them in once the motherboard try is fully in as the cables aren't long enough (and 1 has to run diagonally across the motherboard to reach. The rear fan has to reach into the case through the HDD caddy hole and then back directly below itself again otherwise the motherboard tray won't close properly.
• Now with the PSU over the GFX it means the GPU might run cooler, but there is no fan pull air away from the CPU at all as the fan for the hard drive caddy is in a separate compartment. Yes there is 2x 120mm fans pulling cool air in, but you can feel the warmth pour out of the side as you take the panel off.

Bit of a grumble there, but after putting it all together and almost tearing my hair out, I didn't think I'd have to open it up again. Except for my supplier also got me a faulty hard drive.
So to replace it I need to:

1. Unscreen motherboard tray
2. Take off both side panels.
3. Unplug the front panel cables
4. Unplug the fan cables (all 3 of them)
5. Unplug the P4 cable (admittedly this is due to the motherboard, not the case)
6. Slide the motherboard try out.
7. Unplug all the SATA and power cables of the hard drives else the caddy will not remove.
8. Finally remove thumbscrews holding the caddy in and slide it out the back.

All this to remove 1 hard drive? Would it have been too hard to make the caddy removable from the side or cut a couple of cable holes.

On the plus side it does look amazing when it works...

I'll try get some pictures up to demonstrate what I'm talking about.

System spec:
Intel i5 760
2x2GB DDR12800 Geil Black Dragon
Gigabyte GA-H55-UD2H
ASUS 5450 512mb passive
OCZ 500 ModXstream Pro
Sony Optiarc DVD+-RW
500GB WD Caviar Blue
1000GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.11

Maybe I've just had a really bad experience, please if anyone else has used this case let me know your experience. My conclusion - if you can't get the V351B change the bezel of your optical and get it in silver.

To be honest, the V351 wasn't that much better, though admittedly you could access the HDDs by removing the rear fan.

Sounds a bit crap to be honest.

So you enjoyed the new case then?

My silver 351 is a fiddly beast to work with too. It's a huge case, but there's simply no room to work in it... My favourite part is the sata power cables stopping the 80mm fan from fitting in. You have to hope you have the right type of connectors on your PSU cable, if not, no fan.

The frustration of reattaching the side panels and not dislodging the blanking plates is another downer. You just know if you're too rough, you'll scratch the swine.

From your account though Guardsmon, It sounds like they made its successor even worse!