Gadgetory

this pcq 28 from lien li was actually sent to me months ago and it accidentally got buried under a pile of cases with its factory tuning in data center DNA and Intel 730 series SSD is an amazing choice for gamers and performance enthusiasts speaking of which there is a link to our store in the video description if you're logged in to the forum you can check that out and you can see that we're unloading some products that we used for previous videos on the cheap so definitely check that out but anyway I finally dug it out when I decided that I wanted to gain more on my TV and I realized that my PC qo7 wouldn't fit the kind of graphics card I wanted for the best possible experience the pc q 28 is quite a bit larger than my older case but is still small enough to fit in the cabinet under my TV and it comes with some updated features that make it both very easy to build in and very functional let's start with the outside if you've ever seen the leanly case before then I don't need to tell you that the fit and finish of they're all aluminum cases is exceptional and this one is no exception to the exceptional nough sit unexceptional I guess so it's good though the brushed aluminum finish is beautiful and every joint lines up perfectly at the front you can install a five and a quarter inch drive and I did I happen to own one blu-ray a copy of Disney's Enchanted so if I ever feel like watching that I want to make sure that I'm prepared true freaking story not even joking about that and other than that on the front it's just a little lean Lee logo and the power button on the right hand side we find the front i/o two USB 3.0 ports a headphone jack and a microphone jack and then on the bottom we find a filtered intake right there at the front for the front 140 millimeter fan that is going to bring fresh air to the inside of the system on the left hand side we find not a whole lot of anything and on the top we find a 120 millimeter exhaust at the back well two expansion slots so it supports either I TX or D TX and then power supply so that's pretty much it opening up the side panel was refreshingly simple rather than 6 tiny little countersunk screws leanly is doing a sliding system with one screw and then little plastic latches for the rest of them much better much less tedious to open up and much less likely to cause you to lose something now the first thing I'd like to say before we get inside is that I am using a personal build to showcase this chassis so some of the hardware choices might seem a little bit odd trust me I know alright so now that it's opened up the first thing I want to show you is actually something that's not in there anymore and that is this right here these two thumb screws down here on the bottom we're holding in this handy-dandy bracket that accepts up to two two and a half inch or two three and a half inch drives I don't really need internal drives because I'm using an as with I scuzzy to install my games so I went ahead and took this piece out in order to give my graphics card a little bit more breathing room here at the bottom next up is the top hard drive cage which I also removed to give that front 140 millimeter fan as much room to work as I could this one accepts for three and a half inch drives with a two and a half inch drive hanging from the bottom so that's a total of up to seven mix-and-match internal drives in this tiny little case now cable management won't be super tidy if you do instead decide to install that stuff so make sure that your expectations are reasonable but the good news is that it doesn't have a windowed side panel so no one will ever see it you can see what I did is I remove that so that does give me quite a bit more cable management room although I don't have anywhere to actually wrote those cables to your power supply can be up to a hundred and seventy millimeters in length but I'd recommend a little bit shorter if you're planning to use that drive cage or if you're planning to use a modular power supply and I'd also recommend picking up a short cable kit Silverstone has some great stuff for better cable management I was on a budget when I first built this media PC so I'm actually using an an tech true power new 550 watt power supply that I actually hacked all the cables short on and then soldered them back together reinsulated and reese leave them it does improve cable management but also makes the extra 6 pin PCI Express cable that I had to attach for my better graphics card with its long wire on it look a little bit out of place and really guys that's not something that I would recommend doing is just something that I did for this particular build speaking of the graphics card and the connector for it I've got an open airflow gtx 660ti that doesn't quite seem to be frauding in this system but runs at a hundred degrees under load in Far Cry 3 for that reason I would prefer a rear exhaust card but this one I was able to trade Luke's friend something for so the price was right there is lots of room in the case to install something as big as a GTX 780 Ti in there but based on how hot this one's running even though it is an open airflow design I don't think that that's something that I'm going to do without modding another intake or something because that front intake does have a 140 millimeter fan behind it but the vent is quite small and and it's it's definitely going to need more airflow I mean one option would be to take like a slim fan or even open up the bottom of the case here to get some better airflow and just throw like like a dust filter or something on there and then the other thing to consider to guys is that your media cabinet is going to get quite hot especially running games with something like this inside of it so but even now I'm going to have to get like a 120 millimeter hole so I'll cut some holes and then get some get some airflow going on in there as well if we take out the four thumb screws at the back we can slide the power supply back which allows us to see the gigabyte z87 ITX motherboard that i've got installed in here the cpu and there's a core i5 45:17 on k it runs about 70 degrees in my gaming load scenario in Far Cry 3 and 75° Mac's running prime95 small FFT with the random silent X color that I have on there I'm actually happy with those results I turned the fan around so that it feeds directly into the power supply for exhaust but I would definitely recommend using a thermal probe to ensure that your motherboard vrm temps are still okay before doing something like that in your own system normally your motherboard should want to benefit from the downdraft airflow that's coming from your CPU fan the front connectors in the system I don't know if you'll be able to see this very clearly but that USB 3 one in particular is pretty taut yes the other ones were okay but there's more strain on that USB 3 connector than I would have liked this is an unusual spot on this motherboard for the front header for USB 3 and the front ports do work but another inch would have made a really big difference with the power supply popped out you can also see my my super ghetto cable cutting job here and how short the cables on this power supply again I don't really recommend doing that so if we take off the other side panel you can see that behind the motherboard tray we find a very limited amount of space for cable management and we also find my boot drive it's a 1.8 inch 64 gig SSD from Kingston this freed up some space for me in the front for better air flow which I desperately need given that you saw my GPU temperatures and since I don't really need any storage in this machine 64 gigs is lots for my OS and like the four internet browsers that I need to have running at all times so in conclusion overall I really like this case I'm happy with it but I went in knowing that I was trading proper ventilation for physical beauty don't expect to fill the PC q28 up with everything that you can physically pack inside and have it function seven drives plus like a graphics card and it should be noted that if you do install drives on this bottom sled here you're not going to be able to install a double slot graphics card so even five drives plus that graphics card it's just not enough ventilation and you would have to make some alterations to make that happen so with that said I've definitely still got some work to do on this bill but I don't really think it's fair to review the case after I've modded it so I think we're pretty much done here guys like and share this video if you liked it helps us out a lot dislike it if you disliked it and leave a comment on the Linus tech tips forum linked in the video description if you want to discuss this product with the other members of our community or if you have any constructive criticism for me in my team also linked in the video description is our support link of options to buy cool t-shirts give us a monthly contribution or even just give us a kickback whenever you buy random junk on amazon.com or dot de or dot wherever it is that you happen to be so check that out if you enjoy our videos it helps us out a whole bunch Ellen as all these guys thanks for watching and don't forget to subscribe