Lian Li PC-C60 Desktop / HTPC Case

Lian Li knows this and are making more and more home theater cases as the needs of the end users change. Their latest HTPC case is the PC-C60, offering a lot of features which most cases of this type do not. To start with it has USB 3.0, room for several hard drives, more than enough cooling/air flow and the ability to support full-size ATX motherboards. All that, and you still get the Lian Li quality, and aluminum construction, that we have grown to love.

Introduction to the Lian Li PC-C60 HTPC Case

The whole home theater PC trend seems to be at a standstill because of the huge surge in media player sales. However, there are many things which a good home HTPC system can do but a media player cannot. Can you play games on a media payer? No. Can you browse the internet on a media player? Not most, as a few can like the D-Link Boxee. Can you post your life away on Facebook and Google Plus? Nope. This is just a short list of things a good HTPC system can do that are simply not in either the hardware, or software, capabilities of a media player.

Lian Li knows this and are making more and more home theater cases as the needs of the end users change. Their latest HTPC case is the PC-C60, offering a lot of features which most cases of this type do not. To start with it has USB 3.0, room for several hard drives, more than enough cooling/air flow and the ability to support full-size ATX motherboards. All that, and you still get the Lian Li quality, and aluminum construction, that we have grown to love.

Specifications

Closer look at the exterior

When it comes to HTPC cases (or the “desktop” case of a bygone era which this resembles), at one time they all pretty much resemble one another. Single optical drive support, installation for just a couple of 3.5” drives (if you were lucky), mATX motherboard options and lackluster air circulation. Well, Lian Li is out to change all of that with the new PC-C60.

The new C60 is made completely of aluminum, something Lian Li is know for and why so many people love their cases. Lian Li offers the C60 in two colors which is silver and black.

The C60 from the front looks very simplistic, another thing that Lian Li has done when it comes to many of their cases. On the left we see only the ‘Lian Li’ trademark, while the rest of the features appear on the right side. Here we have two full size 5.25″ optical drive bays, one of which being covered by a stealth door; a second drive will be visible. Just below them we find a single eSATA, dual USB 3.0 ports for the storage freaks out there and two audio jacks. Separated by a gap we finally have the power and reset buttons.

One of the things that makes the C60 a nice upgrade from other HTPC cases would definitely have to be the cooling. Evidence of the superior cooling aspect can be seen from the outside of the case along the sides. The C60 has a total of five 140mm openings, two per side to allow air to be pushed across the surface of the motherboard and it’s components, though it’s worth noting that one is for the PSU. The remaining fan opening is elegantly concealed by a flush-mounted block off plate on the top panel, should you want to display the case out in the open (as you should). Lian Li have packaged the C60 with two 140mm fans (3pin motherboard controlled) for you and removable filters, sans PSU opening. The three side fan openings also have provisions to fit one size smaller fan if you prefer

 

The rear of the C60 looks similar to many of the tower cases we have reviewed. The enclosure has a total of seven expansion slots which is just enough for your average ATX-sized motherboard. The C60 does not come with a power supply but it does support your typical ATX PSU.

To keep the unit off the surface of whatever it is sitting on Lian Li equipped the cases with rubber-bottomed circular feet, which lifts the case about a 1/2inch off the surface.

Closer look at the interior

Looking at the opened case from above and we see the unit is pretty spacious. How spacious? Well, the case can house video cards as long as 370mm in the upper half of the case, or the first 4 expansion slots, and 270mm in the lower half. Removing one or both of the HDD cage towers can of course result in longer cards being used in all the slots.

Each of the optical and HDD trays has to be removed from the case in order to add drives to them. Each cage tower can hold a single 2.5” drive on the top level, for a total of three. When it comes to 3.5” drives a total of six is supported, with the option to install an adapter to fit that many additional 2.5″ drives instead. Also, each tower is modular in that each individual cage can be removed, or have more added as space allows.

Here we have images of the 140mm fans that come with the C60.

The opposite of the case has two ventilation areas to vent warm air. The vent on the left has a dust filter while the one on the right does not. Reason being the one on the right is for the power supply’s fan. The power supply will sit on rubber bumpers to eliminate vibration.

Installation

Here we have the ASUS P8P67 Deluxe motherboard and large Rasetsu CPU cooler installed, with plenty of space leftover.

Radeon HD 6950 DirectCU II installed, also with room to spare, but only until we add the drive cages back in.

Non-modular power supply installed.

Optical drive mounted.

SSD sitting on top of optical cage.

Clearance between the HDD cage and the long GPU with it’s 3-slot cooling solution.

Conclusion

Overall, the Lian Li PC-C60 is a great choice for a home media PC. The simplistically elegant design makes it the perfect case to blend in with your other quality home theater components, making for a nice case to build a media center around. There is more to the PC-C60 than just its looks, there is the functionality of the interior as well.

Lian Li designed the case to be a media file server, with the capability to hold several mass storage drives, as well as a few solid state drives. Six 3TB hard drives makes for a whole lot of storage to keep your digital media. And if for some reason you want to use the C60 as a case for a gaming system it can serve that roll equally well. There is plenty of room to house a couple of higher end graphic cards as we know there are plenty gamers out there that like to game on a big screen, but don’t want to use a gaming case in the living room. Another perfect fit for the C60.

By providing two large 140mm cooling fan in the C60 with room for a third opposite them, and an option to add another in the top panel will all help to eliminate the poor air circulation that HTPC cases are known to have. The fans blow from the top of case across the motherboard surface and out the opposite end of the case. Cooling off much of the components in the system. This could be a small hiccup if you use a long GPU that blocks a lot of the airflow across the motherboard, but there is enough room still that we don’t see it causing any real troubles.

There is not much we could find wrong with the C60, but compared to a lot of Lian Li cases, this one is not completely tool-less. Tools are needed to remove the HDD cages as well as the installation of the drives. Removal of the center brace was also needed to be done before making the motherboard installation easy. The latter was no big deal since the inclusion of it in the design makes the case more stable.

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