Assembly

The one and only viable purpose of the mainboard tray is an installation of the board and memory. Anything else will not fit or will get in the way when reinserting the tray back into the chassis. Once the board is inside the case, it becomes apparent that the P60 is quite compact. Nonetheless it looks very tidy, even with all the small cables connected. This is thanks to some creative routing of the unnecessary long front I/O cables.


These connectors are nothing out of the ordinary. You have the choice between HD and AC '97 Audio connectors and the eSATA connectivity is realized with the use of a normal SATA cable, which plugs directly into the mainboard header.


Installing the PSU is quite simple as it can be done outside the case. Simply secure the frame to the rear of the PSU and push it into the case. The frame itself is held in place by four thumb screws.


Installing the hard drive has its advantages and drawbacks. It uses the same mechanism as in the K7, but you still need to gain access to the hard drive cage itself. You can pull the entire unit out from the front of the case, or you simply remove the bottom three drive bay covers and slide the hard drives in through the front. It would have been nice if Lian-Li would have done it the same way as with the K7. The way it is now, you may have problems with long graphic cards and may be forced to move the entire hard drive tray into the middle compartment instead of keeping it on the bottom.


Optical drives are installed the usual way. Simply insert them through the front and secure them with a screw driver and the included screws. Once the case is filled, it still looks quite clean and while large graphic cards will fit, any SLI or Crossfire setup will take up most of the available space.

Finished Looks

Turning on the P60 is followed by a "wow" effect. The one reason I can convey with pictures. The three LED fans up front look beautiful in blue. It would have been sweet if Lian-Li could have gone with a different color instead, since blue - while nice - is now available everywhere. The second reason is the silence of the fans. I was so surprised that three fans could be so quiet, that I checked the fan controller if it was turned up all the way, which it was. Turning it down slows down the fans to a bare minimum. Interestingly enough the middle fan of the door stopped spinning and made a high pitch noise, traditional of fans which do not get enough power. The two other fans and the 140 mm fan keep (barely) spinning silently. I am not sure if this is just a problem with the review unit, but I do not see any real reason to turn the fans down so far, as they are truly quiet, even at full speed.


The door can be openend while the entire unit is running of course. You will only need to do so if you want to use a drive or to adjust the fan speed. As you can see, I used a white drive once again. You can get away with this thanks to the front door.


The power and hard drive access LEDs are both blue and are identical to those of the Metal Boned K7. The 140 mm fan up top shimmers through the air vents and you can feel the cool breeze pushing through the openings.