Hardware Lian Li PC-Q11 review

A tiny, brushed aluminium case for a mini-ITX gaming PC - but can it handle the heat?

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cases/2010/10/08/lian-li-pc-q11-mini-itx-case-review/1

 

I want it. That is all.

Before anyone asks what for, I'll tell you. A tiny yet powerful PC for my home office, which would be used for office application tasks and web browsing only. It's so small and pretty that it would look right at home on my black desk, hooked up to a nice moderately sized 24" IPS display with a wireless keyboard and mouse

 

Phew - I was about to say that Lian Li had made the changes to the PC-Q07 that my forthcoming build log was going to, but fortunately for me (and unfortunately for everyone else) they haven't. Nice to see other people cottoning on to the shorty-GTX460/PC-Q07 thing, though - funnily enough I have a Gainward GLH and a DFI MI-P55-T36 w/ i7 860 sitting at home...

 

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/pcs/2010/10/07/asrock-vision-3d-mini-pc-135b-review/1



It comes in black too!

 

Just for the record, I have this case and I had no problems inserting the PSU from the rear, I'm using a CoolerMaster Silent Pro M500.

 

would make for a fantastic HTPC

 

That seems like a lovely case. If somehow with some modding you could get that psu out of that case, insert a bigger/silent cpu cooler and cooling for the hard drives. Awesome

 

Mmmm, yeah. I was reading that this morning as well! After having given it some serious thought though, I think I still prefer the PC-Q07 for a mini-itx office desktop. It's just so small and pretty, although the Q11 does have some nice advantages over it.

My original plan for the office was to have an all-Apple setup - 27" Apple cinema display, wireless keyboard, magic mouse and a 15" i7 MBP to use with the lid closed when it's connected to the monitor, and that I can obviously disconnect and take with me anywhere.

I am now undecided Thankfully, it won't be happening for a while anyway, so I'll have plenty of time to make my mind up. I don't have a spare 2 grand to drop on the Apple setup or £1500 for the Windows based option at the moment

 

It seem to me PSU is the real downside to mini ITX. With as small mobo it's really what is the harder to fit in, considering mini ITX mobo need less power it would be interesting to have a different way of powering them.

 

You mean Pico PSU's? That's been done... it's the large and powerful graphics cards that suck all the power in these tiny machines and require a full size PSU, not the motherboard.

 

Would this benefit at all from using Lian Li's PSU extender thing?

http://www.lian-li.com/v2/en/product/product06.php?pr_index=249&cl_index=2&sc_index=10&ss_index=112

 

I love it!

 

Simple...

...a Silverstone ST45FSF SFX PSU (450w) with an adapter plate as done by mars-bar-man in his PC-Q08B build: http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=190391&page=5.

More room for the CPU cooler and the airflow from the front fan to circulate.

 

Love it! Good to see it's got dust filters, it was a glaring omission on the last Lian Li case I had.

 

Hmmm, if half of the front fan is blowing onto/into the PSU anyway, why use an extra PSU cooler?
In other words, they should offer a semi-passive PSU for it, that is actively cooled by the front fan.
Shared fans are so easy, yet implemented nowhere...

 

The issue isn't about the cooling of the PSU, it is about the size of the PSU blocking the airflow from the front fan from reaching the CPU & GPU (if a discrete card is used). The noise generated in the review was the stock Intel cooler ramping up due to heat. If there was more room for a better cooler then the noise issue would go away (or would at least be reduced).

A passive PSU would still present the same problem.

 

It does look like if you increased the dimensions a small amount and made the following changes:

- PSU in the floor with fan sucking cool air in from the bottom,
- Change the DVD drive for a slimline laptop style one
- Move the HD's up to underneath the DVD drive

The cooling ability of the case could be drastically improved. I dont' have all the dimensions to hand at the moment but I can't imagine it would make a *massive* difference to the overall size.

 

Great review!

Love Lian Li's cases. Had thought about a Q07 for my new mini-itx build.. Now, I'm going for the Q11!

 

Those hdd temps shouldn't be a problem at all. Unless you're going to be running Furmark et al for three years nonstop.

http://static.googleusercontent.com.../labs.google.com/fi//papers/disk_failures.pdf

This study was released over 3 years ago and people still insist that hdds can't go over 30c or they will instantly implode. Now why is that?

 

That's an interesting study, thanks for posting the link.