Lian Li The Hammer PC-90 Full-Tower Chassis Review

So as they say, you save the best to last, but to be honest, I don’t really know where to start with this chassis, so lets get all the things I didn’t like out of the way and then we’ll move on to what I do like about it.

The build time for this system was appauling, from the outside I had the impression this was going to be a standard installation, but upon opening it and discovering Lian Li have re-invented the wheel in terms of hardware installation I was scraching my head in no time wondering how this is all going to work, I would say that from start to finish the system took around two hours and then an extra one hour to disassemble, given that most system I could build and dismantle in around one hour total that is quite a long time.  This was mostly due to the vague instructions that came with the system, with very limited explinations and small pictures being your only indication as to how things should be assembled there was a lot of trial and error going on inside this system as I built it.

After I finished the build, I’m fairly certain its not how it should look, after a quick look on Lian-Li’s website, they had pictures that displayed a hard drive arrangement that I just found unobtainable or messy when approached.  The cable management in this case is not completely lacking, but I wouldn’t call a cutout near the back where you can stuff cables much of a solution.

Now with that out the way, what are the good points of this case, well interestingly enough the same things that I didn’t like, becuase they haven’t designed the case like this just to be different.  Lian Li have a team of skilled designers that have managed to find a solution to allow a case this size to take a dual socket board and a full compliment of hard drives and graphics cards, creating a neat and tidy solution for everything from heavy duty desktop applications to servers all in one case.  By moving the hard drives to the side of the chassis a huge amount of space is left for air flow, the two 140mm fans in the front and a whopping great motherboard with 10 expansion slots, which is pretty impressive given that from the outside that case looks as simple as a cheap mid-tower chassis, albeit one that has an expensive finish to it.

While I did have issues with cable management, there were cables laid internal base of the chassis, by the time the system was complete and the vertical mounts were in place, everything looked neat and tidy, partly due to the fact that its obscured from site, but also because even with a a full system inside, there was still a load of room to spare and a completely unobstructed airflow throughout the case.

So overall I am very happy with the design of this case, while I wouldn’t personally choose to use a chassis like this I do understand its implications, if you can cope with the complex build and layout of its design, then you can really reap the rewards these “problems” offer, giving you all the room you need for a extreme or server based system in a very chassis that has a very simplistic and clean design, which is why I am award the Lian Li PC-90 The Hammer our Innovation Award, because while you can’t see if from the outside, the level of engineering that has gone into this thing is astounding, meaning that Lian Li really has justified the £150 price tag just nicely.