Yewen Reviews: PC7SE

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Lian Li PC7SE

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Silver All Aluminum Case

Appearance:

The case continues with the usual Lian Li style that has been common in most of there cases for a long period now, without any major changes. Features to note about the appearance of this case mainly are the black strip at the top of the front panel, which is a nice touch and makes all the difference on the PC7SE, transforming it from a bland box into something to focus in on subconsciously adding to its lasting appeal.

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The rear of the case has no real surprises just the addition of a 120mm fan over the previous additions of this case.

Design Features:

The case at first glance is assumed to have no advanced features; yet it has more than you first think there would be. The ease at which the front panel can be removed by just four small screws is much nicer than a plastic front with fragile clips, the addition of fairly strong front panel door cover is most welcome.

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Every bay in the case has Aluminum holders to keep the drive you are securing in place so you need not hold it while securing it to the case, the same can be said of the PSU area, with four little brackets to hold it in place.

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The PSU has a removable fitting bracket which makes installation of the PSU a quick and easy job that takes a matter of a minute, with no danger of dropping the PSU into the case.

The fan is positioned to cool the hard drive bays which it does quite well.

The top bracket which hides the CD drive is useful as it also hides the PSU, giving the overall effect of a tidier case.

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Design Improvement Ideas:

In a review it is all to easy to miss out the little things that make your life easy, so I will just now list the parts which made the build in this case slightly less than perfect.

The motherboard when installed in the middle flexed towards the back of the case slightly to much for my liking, although this should not be a problem it is not to the standard I have come to expect from Lian Li and they should have added a strengthening bar behind to prevent this from happening.

Another idea is the hard drive rack, this could be made with a roof on top, or maybe side mounted as the total capacity for hard drives is 3, or 5 without floppy disk drives.

The third idea for improvement has to be the inclusion of extra parts, the lack of a CD stealth panel and thumbscrews for the PCI cards was a slight letdown but nothing major, just a inconvenience.

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Conclusion:

Appearance: 7/10 (Nothing New)
Design: 8/10 (Nothing New)
Quality: 8/10 (Usual Lian Li)
Cooling and Noise: 9/10 (Good Cooling and Low Noise even with raptors)
Feel Good Factor: 7/10 (Nothing New)
Overall: 39/50
 
Yes Yes sorry about that :(

Its just the way I write things, will be in all my reviews as it is to difficult to be objective and I make no attempt to hide it, as the review is afterall my opinion, other users are entitled to there own.

Well the case collection in my room is:

V1000+
CM110
CM201
CM201b
Cheiftec Scorpio
Cheiftec Dragon

So one of them most likely :)
 
Nice one.... About that....

Well he has supplied me with all the CM cases yes...

But the rest are mine through and through :)

Always been a Cheiftec / Lian Li person so was in the opposite camp for most of the CM hay day.

Now you will get dissapointed with me when the 110 scores highly, but it is a good cases bar the outdated cooling.

Lets see what tommorrow brings as other than Worcester playing im not up to much :)
 
The pc7se is slightly larger inside but lacks the removeable motherboard tray.

So in all in all they are about the same to build in. I would probabaly think think the best case to go for after having a 201 would be the pc7se if you want to keep the same sort of styling but improved cooling, Mekrel has noticed some quite impressive drops in temp from using Silenx fans in the 201 to the stock ADDA in the Lian Li which has to say something for the cases capacity really :)
 
The bottom cage can not be removed as one side is riveted :(

It could be removed, but not put back again sadly, and I will point Mekrel here as we did not try and remove the floppy cage!
 
Which the Black Widow or the silly excuse for a window mod :p

Well if I had the silly window prit stick mod then I would review it :p

I refuse to buy that off you though :p
 
UPDATE: The hard drive cage can also be removed, and refitted in a different way leading to the possibility of advanced noise dampening.
 
You can get the pc7se with window pre-built, otherwise quite easily if your planning a window in some weird place, and yes it is possible, behind motherboard plate and the back side, yeh.
 
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