Assembly

Caseking was kind enough to lend us an EVGA SR-2 HPTX mainboard so that we could show you what such a unit looks like when installed in the case. As expected, it is a tight fit and fills the entire chassis. There is some space to the right, so you could group unwanted cables here or in the ceiling of the enclosure. Taking a quick look at the holes in the mainboard tray, only one of the two sockets is accessible. Considering the fact that this is a HPTX capable chassis and the only consumer board being the SR-2, it would have been good to maximize compatibility with it for this chassis. I am sure some HPTX multi-socket server boards will fit these openings perfectly fine.


Installing a normal board is also possible. In fact the PC-90 can hold any major format, be it ITX, mATX, ATX, eATX, XL-ATX or HPTX. Installing such a traditional ATX unit also means that you will have plenty of space within the case. As the chassis does not offer any real possibilities for cable management or hiding, I bunched up as many of them behind the 120 fans and then routed them to each of the connectors on the board.


Installing an optical drive is a bit different due to the internal design of the chassis. To prepare the drive bay one has to remove the entire front, which also gives way to the dust filters of the front fans and the screws holding the top panel in place. Once you have removed the special ODD cover and the drive bay is free, you may slide in the optical drive on the included rubber rings. The unit is then secured with a single thumb screw on either side, so that it will not slide in too far. Once in place, you may put the front ODD cover back in its place.


The PSU may be pushed in the back of the chassis after attaching the frame to it. Alternatively, you may take off the top cover and place the PSU inside the PC-90 through this opening. As an interesting side note: Lian Li seems to recycle parts intended to hold drive bays and front panels from another case as cross beams for the top cover, as these have numerous holes and cutouts that seem to suggest such an intended use. This of course does not matter and this case still functions perfectly fine.


Even though this chassis is extremely compact, you may still include up to twelve hard drives. The front of each part can hold up to 3x 3.5 inch units, while the rear will only allow for 3x 2.5 inch ones to be installed. Still this is plenty for such a chassis and Lian Li has done an excellent job in offering so much space. Each drive rests on rubber rings, to keep vibrations to a minimum here as well. Due to the unique nature of this chassis, you better make sure that you have wired as much as possible before placing these parts back unto the chassis, as it will be hard to reach the connectors on the motherboard otherwise.


Lian Li has also included their support bar, which holds long and heavy cards with the plastic clip and screw combo. This is excellent as many cards tend to warp over time due to heat and gravity.


Once everything is installed, you can clearly see that there is a tad bit of space left so that you could fiddle and connect additional cables to the board if need be. Also the opening next to the mainboard tray should be large enough when using a normal ATX, XL-ATX or eATX board. As you can see in the second picture, the Prolimatech Super Mega barely fits but blocks the top two 2.5 inch hard drive bays. So if you are using an SR-2 you may end up losing up to four bays facing the inside of the chassis, thus leaving you with "only" eight spots.

Finished Looks

"The Hammer" makes a great impression when finished. Due to the compact size and the drive bay covers people can only guess what monstrous hardware may be hidden inside. The size may fool many people - which is one of its biggest attributes.


The optical drive pops the cover nicely and works flawlessly when being pulled back in. The two afore mentioned LED/Button combos are pretty darn sweet as well.


Taking a quick look at the rear, everything is where it should be and even when utilizing an SR-2 along with four graphic cards, you should still be able to keep things in check.