Ordering Lian Li PC-65B soon!

[BZeto]

Ok, I think within the next couple of days I'm gonna order the Lian Li PC-65B. I want a mid tower because it will be a lot more portable than my current case. And I hear the quality of Lian Li is unsurpassed.

From the reviews and comments I have read, this case is great.

Does anyone disagree?

 

[mechBgon]

The PC-65B is the same basic design as my PC-86, and I think you saw the mods I did to mine.

With just one rear-panel exhaust fan on the stock design, its cooling may be a little bit less than you hope for (I got one from so-trickcomputers and had them punch a second 80mm exhaust below the stock one, but this added a lot of delay to the order).

Beyond that, it doesn't leave you an elegant way to route your PSU wiring unless you want to go crazy and do a cable-bypass operation :Q And it shows fingerprints. I do miss the ease of opening my Antec 800-series case, too, and I feel the need to be much more careful with the Lian-Li side panels (don't want to set it where I can accidentally kick it or something, unlike the destruction-proof steel Antec panels).

The amount of drives you can cram into a Lian-Li mid-tower is remarkable, but it does come at the cost of not taking dual-processor-sized motherboards (unless you got one of the special extra-deep variants Lian-Li makes).

Speaking of drives, presumably you're gonna get black ones or else the Lian-Li stealth bezel covers?

 

[BZeto]

Nope, I dont recall seeing your case.

I plan on running a pretty high powered exhaust fan (sunon 50 CFM) controlled by a rheobus, so hopefully having just one rear exhaust wont be to bad for temps.

Wow, what you did with the cable bypass op. looks great! Unfortunatley I could not trust myself doing that. I will try and hide the cables the best that I can. Not that my current full tower Chieftec case looks that tidy anyway.

I dont have black drives but I want to do the stealth mod. I have a general idea on how to do it, but if you have any guides that would be wonderful. I'm pretty sure it'll work fine on my Lite-On CDRW but I'm not too sure how it will work with my CDROM drive since the outside of the tray is sort of rounded out. ( I plan on getting a DVD-ROM someday though). Not sure what I'll do with my floppy, guess I could try to paint it.

Thanks for all your help.

 

[mechBgon]

There's a true stealth mod, but I was simply referring to the easy-to-install Lian-Li flip-down bezels like you see in this photo They just bolt on with one bolt on each side and there you go. They run about $11 at coolerguys.com. Of course, a black Lite-On CD-RW is only around $40 these days...

If the cable-bypass mod looks scary, see if the simple rectangle-cutout mod shown here looks less intimidating. It gives you a clean way to sneak some cables down the backside, assuming that not all your 5.25" bays are full. This one's a snap, I think you could probably do it with a utility knife and a supply of heavy-duty utility-knife blades if you wanted (or a handheld hacksaw blade).

 

[MichaelD]

Well, this thread title caught my eye. I have a PC-65B...thought I haven't yet played around with it..long story.

A slight addtion to what Dr. mechBgon said. True, the 65B does only come w/one REAR exhaust fan. But it also comes with one TOP exhaust fan. While this is not as good IMO as a second rear fan, it is still an exhaust fan nonetheless. Heat does rise, afterall. It should grab the heat from the optical drives and any heat that manages to sneak past the rear exhaust and PSU fans. It should work well, IMO. Proof is in the pudding though, so we'll see what happens. LianLi makes high-quality stuff; I doubt they have a fan-scenario that didn't work well. But again, we'll see.

I may cut that second hole out myself, depending on what I find my case temps to be. That will take some time to sort out. Oh, I dunno..I will be cutting stuff left and right anyway. I plan on duplicating most if not ALL of the great ideas that mechBgon came up with for his case. They look great and work well.

AFA the drives go, yeah, that's the one major drawback to a black case; you've got to get all black drives or black faceplates, else it's gonna look like @ss.

I decided to go "all the way" w/this build; I bought a black DVD-rom, black CDRW and a black floppy. Sure, i could've dyed the faceplates (PITA) or bought the stick on faceplates (didn't think of that one) but I needed a new DVD-rom anyway...and I figured "what the heck, why not?"

I'm planning a black w/blue lighting theme. Solid black front, save for some "special" LEDs, a white text on blue background LCD (yes, LCD as in a Matrix Orbital screen) and blue CCFLs inside. Blue rounded cables and black sleeved PSU cables...to better hide them. I plan on stealthing them where possible, like mech did.

Good luck w/your case. Post pics!!

 

[mechBgon]

The other suggestion I'll add is to optomize. It would be very easy to remove the grillework over the rear exhaust fan (and remove the stamped-aluminum inside grilles that Lian-Li puts on them) and just use a wire grille for low restriction. You could remove the stock grillework with a handheld hacksaw blade and smooth it out with a hand file when you were done.

I also have a lil' guide to porting out the front intake filter holder here or you could simply leave it off entirely. This has to be good for a significant boost in flow, methinks. And lower restriction = less fan noise!

 

[BZeto]

I like how you did the sleeving on your power cables, it looks really professional. I'm using some wire loom but its not too flexible.

What kind of exhaust fans are you running in this pic.

 

[BZeto]

Originally posted by: MichaelD
a white text on blue background LCD (yes, LCD as in a Matrix Orbital screen)

Thats a good idea and would look really great on this case.

Mech: I noticed that outer grill for the exhaust fan does look a bit restricting. I just dont know if I have the right tools and knowledge to do it, and I definitley dont need a screwed up hole in such an expensive case.

Now I just need to order this thing, I can find it pretty cheap at some places(cheaper than newegg). But I risk the great customer service newegg has...

 

[mechBgon]

In that pic, you're seeing a pair of pretty quiet Adda 80mm ball-bearing fans that run about 2150rpm, with three-pin connectors. I even sleeved them but I ended up using a pair of even-quieter NMB 18dB fans back there instead.

Oh, and thanks for the compliments "Professional" is precisely the look I was going for!

 

[BZeto]

I'm reading up on sleeving (b/c from seeing your case it makes it look a TON better). I plan on sleeving a new Fortron 530Watt PSU and my other various wires. I just dont know how many feet of sleeving and heatshrink tubing I need.
I'm straying off subject now, I should probably make this a new thread. But are there any sites that show how exactley heatshrink tubing works?

 

[mechBgon]

If you want to sleeve your PSU, then start with MDay's guide that I mentioned in my cable-bypass page there. Get more sleeving and heatshrink than you think you'll need, it's better than running out. The tool that takes the metal pins out of the plastic 4-pin plugs can be obtained at Radio Shack for $7, but the rest is priced pretty well at SVC. For a one-layer sleeving job, I'd go with about three or four 5-foot sections of 1/4" sleeving and about three 1-foot sections of heatshrink tubing just to be on the safe side. You can sleeve your fan wiring with 1/8" sleeving but the 3/8" heatshrink may not be able to contract enough to fit the ends unless you put two layers of sleeving on.

If you want the sleeving to go on pretty easily, you might want to try 3/8" sleeving, but it'll probably look a little plump.

Here's some more sleeving to look at up close: mechBgon's sleeving photos

The heatshrink tubing contracts when heated up (I use a soldering iron for a heat source) and hugs the sleeving so it doesn't unravel or just look dumb.

 

[BZeto]

In this pic what size is the thinest tubing in the middle? What do you use that for?

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: BZeto
In this pic what size is the thinest tubing in the middle? What do you use that for?

That tubing in the middle is the same stuff you see on those fan wires (two layers of it), it's what SVC calls 1/8". It expands quite a bit if it has to!

 

[BZeto]

Ok, my case should get here friday, I have some plans for it.
I need to know something though, to remove the back grill all I will need to do is cut in 4 small places just where it is "connected" to the case and it should basically fall out, right?

 

[mechBgon]

You're referring to that black filter-holder grille, right? You don't even need to cut it, just pull upwards very firmly to disengage it from its slots, and it comes off. Something like those modular shelves you can buy where the vertical bars go on the wall and then the shelf-support struts jam-fit into slots on the vertical bars

Congrats on your new chassis!

 

[BZeto]

I was actually refering to the rear exhaust grill, the one you replaced with a wire grill. I should have explained better.

But thanks for the tip on the filter holder.

 

[mechBgon]

Oh, gotcha. Yeah, you're exactly right, just cut those four points where the grille meets the rest of the panel and it's outta there. A pretty low-risk operation and it should make the air flow way better.

 

[BZeto]

Great. I suppose like you mentioned earlier, a small hacksaw blade will do?

Thanks for all the help.

 

[mechBgon]

Yeah, the metal's not hard to cut. You should be able to just cut it with a hand-held fine-toothed hacksaw blade, and then finish up with a half-round file to blend the four cut parts into the circle shape of the rest of the hole. It's not like anyone's going to be getting their face six inches from the rear of the case, anyway, so it doesn't have to be uber-perfect, right?

 

[Blooz1]

Cutting that grill out makes an improvement on the airflow, but it also makes a <U>large</U> improvement on cutting down the noise level!