Sorry, but not a good review - look, if someone is going to spend all that money on a case with so many drive bays, the LEAST you can do is review it accordingly. You put a mATX board into a case that supports EATX? Shame on you! Of course there's a lot of space. You put 1 HDD into a case that supports 10? SHAME on you! You put the smallest graphics card in the world into a case that will probably have top house SLI or Crossfire X setups? Shame on you thrice!
First off: You are free to voice your opinion about the review, but there is no need to insult me. So I put in a mATX board, would it have made a difference if I used an eATX board? Would there be less space available? Would the case suddenly shrink in size?
Second: The case was filled with SIX hard drives...not one. (should I start with the whole "shame right back to you" thing now?)
And let's get something straight - putting all the external connectors in a tiny metal box on top of a huge case is not a good idea - can it even fit under a normal desk? Having the USB ports with no space between them - how do you fit a fat device?
Third: Do you own the case? Have you used the B71 or the A7010 or the X2000? Do you know how much/little space you have left under a desk? I did review all three cases, used all three of them under different desks. All of them fit with very little room above. Try reaching for that power button with half an inch of space under the desk.
Forth: the panel above the top drive bay is almost an entire inch high. Do you know how big standard cable trees with USB, eSATA, Firewire etc. are? They would fit easily.
Where are the dust filters? Where's the top panel fans or watercooling radiator mounts? Why the ridiculous position for the fan controller? Why no fresh air vent for the power supply at the bottom of the case? How does it cope with longer heavier power supplies?
The top panel is optional on ALL Lian Li cases. They even sell sets with double or triple rads.
The fan controller is still (kinda) accessible and a feature which other cases (even in this price class) simply do no have, so why is it a bad thing to have that?
Longer PSUs will go over the frame on the bottom, but cooling will not be a problem, it will still hold perfectly well. As for air:
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/LianLi/PC-B71/images/finishedrear.jpg
notice the air vent on the very bottom of the case? There it is.
Where is the cooling statistics? The optical bezel doesn't work with your drive, and you still give it such a high score? And the price! My goodness - have you looked at what else you can buy for the money? Coolermaster must be laughing their heads off.
We do not do cooling statistics on our cases. Why? Simple reason: I live in Europe, we do not have air cons, so we cannot keep a stable temperature within a room like americans.
The bezel is a nice addition, but once again: something you generally do not get in most cases. Stuff like this costs you extra most of the time and it will work with many ODDs, just not the (OLD) IDE DVD rom.
Why is the case expensive? Buy three SATA backplates cages at 80 USD a pop to stuff in a cheap 9 bay case and you are at the same price point as the Lian Li case - without any of the extra features. You may not know this, but I have been reviewing cases for years now from plenty of brands.
Final point - Lian Li used to be great - but for goodness sakes, they're over priced, under engineered and are changing too slowly...
Blue fans! for goodness sakes
Nobody forces you to buy Lian Li, but your comments are by no means objective.
This discussion is done.
cheers
DS
