LIAN LI PC-Q28B

Panzer61 · July 2, 2015

I've built dozens of computers over the years so I'm comfortable inside the case. But this was my first time I built a itx machine so I'm a bit of a novice for this format. I wanted a 51/4" bay for my Bluray/dvd burner and room for a couple of hard drives and a ssd. It had been a while since I had done a AMD build so I used a Gigabyte F2A88XN motherboard, a 7850K and a Sapphire R9285 compact card.

I picked the Lian Li Pc-Q28. Lian Li has a solid rep and it had the features I was looking for. 5 1/4" bay, plenty of hard drive space, room for an atx power supply and I had built in a couple of their cases before. So this seemed like a good choice. It wasn't! First the cost of the case was about $130 on New Egg. I don't mind paying for quality but the case isn't a quality build. The door slides down and is held in place but a single very tiny, and I do mean tiny screw. And with the screw installed the top of the door wasn't flush with the top of the case. It's not even to boot, the rear corner is noticeably higher than the front. The second thing was that a 3.5" drive won't fit on the under a graphics card. A ssd will but it is a close fit. Those two things aren't really a big deal, especially the screw. The air flow in the case is so bad you have to take the cover off. The 140mm front fan doesn't draw it's air directly from the front. It's mounted on a channel that opens to the bottom of the case. The front panel goes to the floor and they cut out some clearance on the sides to let in air. The opening sit quite close to the floor so dust is real problem and it isn't filtered. The size of the opening is about 1 1/4" by 4" and they used a heavy wire mesh to keep out debris so it cuts down the air flow, alot. Even just surfing after about 5 to 10 minutes the 120mm top exhaust fan goes to 100%. I removed the hard drive cage and worked the wiring around the best I could to maximize the air flow and it didn't improve it at all. I'd remove the side panel and in a short time the fans would spin back down.

It does have it's pluses. A atx power supply does fit and there is room for a lot of hard drives. But with a price that is over $100 I can't recommend the case.