Hooray, a new toy! I’ve had my eye on the Lian Li PC-TU200 for some time now, and have been waiting for it to come down in price. It finally has, at least temporarily. Newegg currently has it on sale for $136 shipped (ends 5/23/2012), see here for details. Hopefully the non-sale price of this unit drops as well.
This isn’t meant to be a complete review, just my initial impressions of the chassis. Behold, some glorious cell phone photos:
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| Front – the handle is folded down and not visible |
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| Back – again the handle is folded down. The white box containing the chassis accessories is zip-tied in place for shipping. |
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| One of the most unique side panel removal systems I’ve seen – first release a single thumbscrew (top)… |
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| …then press the lever and the side panel pops open! |
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| Each side panel is held in place by 8 of these small metal things (well, what would you call them?) |
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| A glimpse of the interior |
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| The drive cage and backplanes. Looks like there’s plenty of airflow vents. |
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The rear of the backplane – 4 SATA ports and 2 Molex. 120mm intake fan to the left, secured by a single thumbscrew.
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| Hard drives are secured with plastic rails attached with four large thumbscrews. Not trayless, but at least tool-less! |
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| The hard drive installed in the cage. The single thumbscrew on the left secures the sliding metal rail that holds all four drives in place. |
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| The drive cage also features two mount point for 2.5″ drives in the middle and at the bottom. I’m not sure at this point if the drive will line up with the backplane SATA and power ports, or if it prevents a 3.5″ drive from being installed immediately above it (this photo indicates both limitations are likely true). |
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| Another view of the 120mm intake fan. |
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| The 120mm intake fan. A 3-pin model with a 2-pin Molex adapter and removable dust filter. Fan removal is fairly easy. It is held in place primarily by friction from the rubber anti-vibration mounts, and is locked with a single thumbscrew. Depending on the noise levels, I may replace this fan with a 4-pin PWM model. |
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| The bottom of the chassis. On the left, a second removable dust filter, this one accessible from the exterior. On the right, a third 2.5″ drive mount point. This mount point would only interfere with large or long PCIe video cards, which I won’t be using. The feet are made of metal. |
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| The chassis ships with a handy USB 3.0 to USB 2.0 pin adapter, which I will be using since my motherboard doesn’t support USB 3.0. I’m glad those two front USB ports won’t go unused! |
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| Finally, the chassis ships with a well-designed and easy to follow set of graphical instructions. Always a nice touch. |
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I was somewhat surprised to find that the exterior corner pieces and handle are made of plastic, while the majority of the rest of the construction is brushed aluminum and steel. The plastic is thick and feels durable, so I’m not worried.
My only real concern is that in unpacking the chassis I discovered two of the plastic clips that secure the side panels in place free-floating in the package, one of which was broken. Given Lian Li’s track record for customer service, I expect that a quick email and photo will be met with a replacement clip sent my way. However, I do wonder how these plastic clips will hold up over time. Since most of the construction is durable aluminum and steel, I wish these clips were made of metal as well.
I won’t have a chance to finish this build for another week or more. I’ll post more photos and comments as the build progresses.
- Stephen |
