Assembly

Assembly of the mainboard is done in two steps. First, the separate "Ring Of Light" PCB needs to be secured in the specific aluminum frame. Then the piece is connected to the mainboard and the entire contraption is secured within the XB-01 just like any other mainboard. To reach the various buttons on the Xbox 360 mainboard there are fairly long plastic prongs to get the job done. In our sample that gray prong did not reach the DVD eject button properly. The reason for this distance between front of the case and mainboard is the Ring Of Light PCB. Instead of having the extra PCB touch the power button directly, it has been separated by about one centimeter from the outer shell of the XB-01. This creates the even larger distance between the pairing and DVD eject buttons, which measures around 2.5 centimeters. Placing a few layers of tape on the blue button solved this problem.


Another, small but serious design flaw is the front door for the memory cards slots. It is roughly 82 mm wide on the XB-01, while the distance for the slots measures around 86 mm on the Xbox 360 itself. This means that you will not be able to insert more than one memory card when using the XB-01. The memory cards require exacly 5 mm space on both sides of the connector. The front door of the chassis is simply not that large. After talking to Lian-Li about it, I was assured that the new revision of XB-01 will not have this problem.


We used an XBox 360 "Core" console for this review. This means that the unit does not come with a hard drive. Lian-Li did not include the special cable, usually found within the removable HDD enclosure of the console, so you will not be able to connect a hacked or modded hard drive, unless you also have that grey clip on enclosure. Installing the optical drive on the other hand is easily done and it fits perfectly.


The Xbox 360 does not consist of many different parts, as the GPU, CPU, memory, etc. have been placed on the mainboard. The only thing left to do, was to install the aluminum air shroud, which also fit nicely into the filled XB-01.


When closing the unit, we hit the next problem. The cover did not close properly. Upon closer inspection, it turns out that the sound dampening foam gets in the way of the installed optical drive. Lian-Li should have kept the areas of contact clear instead. Using sound dampening materials is certainly a nice touch, but considering the large air vent up front, the noise is not really being encased anyways.

Finished Looks

Before turning on the unit, let's take a look at the finished rear. As we are using a console without an HDMI connector, the specific sticker had to be used to cover the additional hole. While it does get the job done, it is certainly not very pretty. Maybe a similar type of backplate like on normal motherboards, would have been the better choice in this area. The power connector lines up nicely with the cut out of the chassis.


Turning on the console after the chassis swap bears a nice little surprise. The so called "Ring Of Light" works nicely with the power button of the XB-01. The only downside is the fact that the air vent around it, also lets the LED light shine through.


Comparing the XB-01 to the original enclosure of the console, it becomes apparent, that it is fairly large. Nonetheless, the XB-01 should look nicer in your living room. One nice design feature is the placement of the optical drive. You can now place the console standing up and easily access the optical drive.

As for noise level, the internal 120 mm fan turns out to be just slightly quieter than the dual 60 mm units found in the console itself. There is simply too much heat buildup and since the console is still used to control the fan speed, it simply dials up quite fast. While the air shroud in the normal console is quite compact, which translates into a more compact air flow, the 120 mm fan has to compensate the large passthrough area by pulling more air.