Lian-Li V354 is on it's way, does anyone have any questions?

[Ethyriel]

I had to buy it on eBay since the only ones with stock were Sundial Micro, and I refuse to buy from them again. So I won't have it until between the 11th and 18th, but that will let me test all the others parts which should be here around Wednesday.

I'm going to be building a Linux (or a very slight possibility of Dragonfly BSD) file server in it, using a Supermicro X7SBL-LN2 that Newegg had open box. It has a really weird socket placement, so I'm hoping I'll be able to fit a Megahalems on there in some orientation to cool the E8400 I'm going to steal from my old dead desktop, along with it's 4GB of RAM. My rough measurements from the Newegg photos tell me I can use a 135mm wide tower mounted horizontally before I hit the optical cage, so it's going to be tight. But I really like the Megahalem's mount, so we'll see.

That's all going to be joined by five 2TB Samsung F4 in software RAID, a 40GB Callisto Deluxe for /, and a Seasonic X SS-400FL powering it. Once I get everything up and running, I'll swap out my Noctua P12 and Kaze-Maru fans for some PWM models. I'm just not sure if I'll be using the 140mm top fan or the rear 120mm fan, yet, and Supermicro says not to mix PWM with 3-pin fans on this board.

So, if anyone's been waiting for someone to bite on the V354, queue up your questions. And if anyone wants to point out some stupidity of mine, by all means, please do so before Newegg ships everything!

[plympton]

Cute little case. I was just wondering, "If I had to get a desktop case, what would I get?" One thought I had was, do I get a small case like this, or get a mid-tower like my P150 (or a Mini P180) that can handle more airflow.

So I guess my question would be, What are you putting in it, what's it consume (power), and how quiet is it?

-Dan

[Ethyriel]

Well, all my internals came yesterday, and the case came today. I'm still messing around with it, but I really love this case. I've owned a ton of Lian-Li cases dating back to one of the first shipments of PC-60's to come to the US. This is by far the best build quality I've seen from them, and that's saying a lot. It seems like they're trying to keep things simple with this line. That's not to say that it lacks features, it's just that instead of implementing the features with complex, sometimes buggy techniques, everything is constructed in a more simplistic and solid manner.

The first thing that stands out is how thick and rigid the side panels are. Like the Q series, the panels are totally flat pieces of aluminum with screws mounting through the sides rather than on an angled bracket wrapped around the back. This gives us many more points of attachment without any sort of rail system. I'm thinking this will have a pretty big impact on the vibrations that can be an issue with aluminum cases.

The next thing is that the motherboard mounts directly to one of the panels. I've heard some complaints about this, and I can see it being an issue if you fiddle a lot, but I really don't see many cases where you need to take off that panel. The standoffs are excellent. They're designed so that the motherboard settles onto them, and it's by far the easiest motherboard alignment I've seen. They're also very high, elevating the motherboard about a centimeter, maybe 11mm off the panel. That's lots of room for tucking cables, if that's your thing.

On my motherboard, I have just enough room to mount the Meghalems with the long edge parallel to the top of the case. If I try to rotate it, which I was considering for the sake of airflow over the heatsink, the power supply gets in the way. The power supply would get in the way on any S1156 board, but I think it would be fine on a S1366 board, and it looks like on upcoming Sandy Bridge boards. My Supermicro board with it's odd socket placement leads to the heatsink being significantly offset from the top 140mm fan, but S1366 and Sandy Bridge should align perfectly.

When choosing a heatsink, note that the hard drive cage aligns pretty much perfectly with the far right edge of the far right MATX mounting holes. Using that knowledge, the CPU mounting holes for centering, and your heatsink's specs, you should be able to get a very good estimate by measuring a top down picture of your motherboard at Newegg. My estimate was within a little less than 2mm.

The two hard drive cages don't seem to be attached, so you'll want to wedge something in between or remove one to minimize vibration. Even if I didn't have five drives, I'd wedge something in to add rigidity.

If anything else jumps up in the build, I'll post back. I'll post temps and subjective noise results once I get everything tested. In a perfect world, with a few days of memtest, a CPU torture, and 5 hard drives to torture, I'd say you can expect that late next week. With work and school, we'll see.

[Ethyriel]

Actually, my first dry run was a little off, the Meghalems is hitting the part of the 5.25" cage which juts out a bit to act as a runner for the top 3.5" cage. A S1366 or Sandy Bridge motherboard looks like it would still be just fine.

It's too bad the modularity isn't a bit different. You can take out any of the two 3.5" cages individually, and also the 5.25" cage. Unfortunately, the top 3.5" is aligned by runners on the 5.25" cage, and also screws into it. I'm considering snipping off that side of the runner, since it doesn't seem to do much beyond aiding in installation. I'm pretty sure some rubber sheeting between the cages will more than make up for that.

[tangcla]

I'm very keen on the PC-V354 for myself. I'm going to be running s1156 in it, thinking an i5-760 with an Asus P7H55-M-LX motherboard. Carrying over my ATi HD5770 as well, so this should be quite a beefy machine in a tiny footprint

So my question is, I'm curious to know what is the largest (best) cooler I can fit in there without hitting the PSU. If you could provide me a measurement of how much clearance there is, that would be very much appreciated!

[Ethyriel]

I'm thinking it's going to be the Thermalright AXP-140, since the socket is under the PSU. I'll get you some clearance measurements, but I don't think you'll be able to use any towers, so it's more going to be motherboard limitations.

[tangcla]

Thanks. Would the Corsair H50 be a good option? Mounting the radiator above the I/O backing plate.

[quest_for_silence]

Would the Corsair H50 be a good option?

The H50 is never a good option here.

[Ethyriel]

You have approximately 142mm by measuring the overlap of the Meghalems over my Seasonic X 460 power supply. So that might vary be socket, and you of course still have to worry about RAM, expansion cards, and junk around the socket.

Unless you have parts already, I'd wait for Sandy Bridge, this case really seems to be designed for that socket placement. It's supposed to be announced first week of January, and from everything I've heard, it's going to be a solid launch with a lot of immediate stock. You might have to wait into mid January to assess the motherboard situation, but Intel seems to be ready to go from the gate on this one.

[Clicking]

Picking up one of these cases later this week, going to be moving my current 775 set up to it. Currently have a HR-01+ which should fit in the case with my current motherboard. I was looking to upgrade to 1156 socket but it looks like the socket is too low to fit the the hr01 and a psu.

How much space is there between a vga card and the power supply?
Doesn't look like my S2 cooler will fit, there isn't much room for larger sized vga coolers width wise.

[Ethyriel]

There's approximately 142mm from the CPU socket to the power supply, so that should give you some idea. I'll pop my old 9800GTX+ in tomorrow and try to measure that, but I don't know how accurate I'll be able to get.

[Ethyriel]

Sorry it took so long. It's hard to tell with the power supply in, but you have about 1" to 1.25" clearance from a video card to the PSU.