Anartik.com’s Blog

Lian Li PC-V1010

This is a write up I did a while back when I got my PC-V1010. As of now I have pretty much ironed out the kinks and added a BS-06 PCI exhaust. I have seen some comments online (mostly in reviews) about dust being a problem and it not having filtration. First off this is the black model which by virtue of being black (like a car) it shows dirt and dust. As a case it does a very good job of controlling dust. The whole front panel is vented but there is micro mesh behind it all which captures dust. Dust will accumulate around the front intake vents but cleaning is as simple as a quick wipe down once evey 1-2 weeks. The 140mm intake on the lower has a washable fan filter. The 140mm I added on the upper chamber has its own filter and is behind the micro mesh on the bay covers. The only intake missing filtration is the vent on the bottom of the case for the power supply. I don’t know why that is even there because there is adequate spacing between the power supply and case. In addition the lower chamber is an isolated tunnel with 140mm intake blowing across the drive racks back to the power supply which has a bottom mounted 140mm fan. Either way the opening is easily remedied with a filter. One thing that is always a good indication of dust intake is your CPU cooler. Most quality coolers these days have thin closely spaced fins that can easily bcome clogged with dust (especially with high CFM fan). This system has been in use about 5-6 months now and when I installed a Thermalright fan holder the other day I cleaned the heatsink. From past experience the dust accumulation was very mild and a couple shots of air cleared it.

Note: My power supply (200mm) is right at the length size limit for this case. Technically there was enough room between the second drive rack and the power supply for plugging in and routing modular cables. However in the interest of simplicity and airflow I went ahead and removed the second 3 drive rack.

If you are looking for lots of bling this case does not have it nor have I added any. The Lian Li PC-V1010 is just cold, hard, tasteful, air cooled tech at its best. At most it may get a blue cold cathode light from my old case but I have not bothered yet. Most of the wiring organization is clean but there are still some loose ends (from frequent tweaking) that have yet to be cleaned up.

Lian Li PC-V1010: While a superb case (at least compared to most of the junk out there) it has some issues. The manufacturers still don’t get it when it comes to designing the perfect case and everyone is on this quiet kick which is good but not when it means poor air flow from inadequate fans and not quite thought out air flow. This case has two thermal zones and the lower is good. The front intake is a fairly low power 140mm that blows into the isolated lower chamber, across the drive racks and back to my Corsair HX1000 power supply which has a 140mm intake. That’s all fine and maybe overkill. The upper chamber where the real heat issues live is another story. The upper zone has no front intake and just vented bay covers for unoccupied bays. The midsection has a 120 fan mounted on the PCI support rail and my Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme has a 110CFM Scythe blowing to the rear 120mm exhaust. The bottom line is that I got little improvement in cooling vs. my old PC-60. I knew from the start it was lacking a front intake for the upper chamber and figured on using a Scythe Kama bay cooler which occupies 3 bays with a 120mm fan. The kicker is the Lian Li is somewhat out of spec in the bays and my SoundBlaster drive and DVD burner marginally fit just ok with gaps. When I went to install the Kama bay the gap in the lower 3 exposed bays was unacceptable. I ended up installing it inside the bays with the vented bay covers in place. That actually bought me back an exposed bay since mounting inside used the 6th hidden bay. The fan in the Kama bay just was not cutting it in that config and I replaced it with a higher CFM Scythe. Later on when I got the Scythe 140mm fans w/ 120 mounting holes and 110CFM I put one in the bay. Because of the bottom lip on the Kama bay the 140’s don’t fit w/o bending out the bottom lip or cutting it off. I also ended up replacing the midsection and rear exhaust Lian Li fans with higher CFM Scythes. Another miscalculation on Lian Li’s part was the placement of the midsection fans mounting slots on the PCI support rail. They make the fan sit too high to provide much cooling to the Northbridge and they need to be lengthened close to the first PCI support slot. At the fans lowest position, w/o the mod, it blows on memory and the upper edge of the mobo missing the NB pretty much altogether. Even with all the updated cooling I had to ditch the DuOrb on my 8800GTX and resort back to the stock cooler. It was pumping entirely too much hot air back into the case. For some reason the stock cooler has a bypass vent on the external exhaust which also pumps hot air back into the case. I ending up putting a slot cooler next to the 8800 and its intake sucks up the hot air from the bypass and pumps it out of the case. The 8800 is overclocked to near ultra levels and let me tell you the area around the two exhausts will just about scorch you after heavy game play. I’m also still using the small Asus fan to help cool the heatpipe setup and exhaust a little air. All said and done the GPU, CPU and Mobo are stable again with the CPU at 4.3 GHz but everything is still too hot for my tastes. Lian Li makes a nice aluminum housing with a 140mm fan that mounts to the exhaust slots above the PCI slots and pumps air out. As soon as I can find one I will add that in and maybe get rid of the slot cooler. All said and done the new system performs well but is not “quiet”. It is however quieter than my old system and well within reason for daily use. IMO there is still is no good balance of quiet performance on air.
Don’t get me wrong as I do like the case but when you get right down to it I’m pretty picky and want things to be right. Below are a few issues with the case.

 As the saying goes “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it”. Lian Li has always had a good side panel system that is secure, does not vibrate and is easily removed with two thumb screws. The new one screw, slide lock mechanism, is a nuisance and is more trouble to remove a door and get it back in place than the original system.

 I would have also preferred that they stuck to a removable front panel with easy access to filter and devices vs. the one piece front/top panel riveted in place. Cleaning the front 140mm fan filter requires removing both side panels, several screws to completely remove the fan and further disassembly to clean the filter. That whole front panel redesign resulted in more nuisance and poorly spaced bays. As others have noted the bay covers are a little flimsy and are easily knocked out of place.

 The PCI support rail is a good idea poorly implemented with cheap plastic retainers for the cards that bend and flex. I think the real issue is it was designed with shorter PCI cards in mind vs. longer cards like the 8800GTX. As I mentioned before the mid section fan mounting slots are poorly placed. With some large round or square CPU coolers you may have to remove the support rail altogether.

 The old motherboard tray design was also better than the new. The old tray design slid right out the back with the removal of 4 thumb screws. The new one is a fold out and requires removing the side panel and multiple conventional screws to remove. The way it fits into place very few “performance” aftermarket coolers can be installed with the tray out. I am using a Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme and it had to be installed inside the case. In all fairness it was too tall for the slide out tray on the PC-60 case.

 They put the fan speed switch in the back next to the rear exhaust and the wiring is pretty poorly thought out. The front and mid fans are supposed to attach to it and the front has to use a long extension. Add to that the power cable from the switch and it’s not pretty. Eventually I will rewire all that with a front fan control/display panel.

 On top is the front connection panel which has a massive bundle of wiring that’s in the way. It has headphone, microphone, 4 USB, ESATA and fire wire. For the most part I prefer my cable mess in the back, out of sight, and I only hooked up two of the USB connections. Audio wise I am already using the SoundBlaster drive in front for headphones or microphones. Ultimately I may just end up removing the whole panel and be done with it. I really can’t fault this but just say it’s too much for my needs and it would be nice if the unneeded cables could be unplugged and removed.

 As mentioned previously there is no air intake for the upper chamber and the stock Lian Li fans are on the underpowered side. I would much prefer if most case manufacturers stopped loading up their cases with fans you have to pay for and will probably replace anyway. If the case is based around some large specialty 200mm+ fan then fine include it.

 Lastly forget about using the rubber bands on the aluminum wheels because they just won’t stay on if you move the case around at all.

Jim Phillips
anartik.com

I’m not really a big proponent of metric and for the most part I don’t use it. However computer fans all come in metric sizes and are sold as such. This is just a little reference for those looking to replace a fan of unknown size. A fan is sold by width and thickness i.e. 120×38mm. If you take a measurement and i.e. it’s 3/8 you just divide the 3 by 8 to get the decimal equivalent which you can then plug in to a metric calculator or find on the chart below.

Here is a good online metric calculator

Common Thickness:
10mm = .3937″
15mm = .59″
20mm = .7874″
25mm = .98425″
38mm = 1.496″

Common Width:
40mm = 1.5748″
50mm = 1.9685″
60mm = 2.3622″
70mm = 2.7559″
80mm = 3.1496″
90mm = 3.5433″
92mm = 3.6221″
100mm = 3.9370″
120mm = 4.7224″
140mm = 5.5118″
250mm = 9.8425″

anartik.com

Anartik's System

Note: At the time of purchase I found this case as cheap as $269 and I paid extra to have the window installed. Don’t ask where I got it because I won’t tell you. The quality of work from that vendor was terrible and the original side panel they sent me was horribly crafted. The replacement panel I received was not much better (at least no cracked window from install) and I would not recommend the vendor. If you want this case w/ a window find the Lian Li optional panel which was not available at the time.

This is a quick description of my current system. This box was built late last year and I still have not gotten around to upgrading my video. I changed my mind numerous times on that subject and decided to wait for a die shrunk dual core GTX280 which is rumored to be available soon. For everyday use and for the games I still play it is more than capable. I currently play COD4 and COD WAW at 1920×1200 pretty much maxed out and still get a FPS range of ~65-90 playing COD4. I have not checked WAW rates but it performs very well. For any given online game I play the system is so fast I am almost always the first loaded and spawned. Occasionally I still play a little Quake Wars and maybe some Battlefield and already put down Farcry 2. You may find me online as LordRaven or LordRavenSky (as more people took my alias). Other than gaming the system gets everyday tasks along with audio & video encoding and editing.

I don’t really see building a I7 system anytime soon but who knows. Next update may be a Yorkfield quad core at 3ghz+ when the prices finally dip. I really don’t want a quad if I can’t get at least 4ghz out of it. Other than that the next gen Geforce and probably a 1.5TB backup drive. Bluray is still a thought but the burners and media are still overpriced and I don’t really watch movies on my PC (have home theater for that).

Not the world’s fastest system by any means (and a new video card would improve it) but it works. I actually toned it down from 4.4 to 4.3 recently which allowed me to drop voltage quite a bit and reduce some of the heat it pumps into the room (can raise room temp 10F easy between CPU/GPU and X48). I am using Windows XP 32 bit so I have roughly 3.33gb of available ram (4gb – 768kb on GTX). A 32 bit OS can only address a maximum of 4gb memory which includes any video memory and memory on any cards you may have.

3DMark06 14265 (@4.275ghz)
Raid ~190mbs peaks and averages ~155mbs

Jim Phillips
anartik.com

Thermalright Fan Holder

We now have the Thermalright fan holder for the Ultra (and TRUE) series of heatsinks. The first thing I did last night after getting the store in order was to grab one and install it on my system. Two of the holders (like the original clips) will fit on the cooler for push/pull operation but I am only currently using a single Scythe Slip Stream 110CFM with good result on an E8500 overclocked to 4.3ghz. The whole installation, including removing the old fan clips, took all of a couple minutes. The 25mm fan snapped inside the holder and the holder snaps in place on the U120E. The bracket will not work for 38mm thick fans.

Thermalright has claimed a performance increase due to increased air flow. With the old clips I had always noticed that a lot of air bypasses the closely space fins of the U120E. The new holder forces more air into the cooler and right away I saw about about a 1-2C difference (using RealTemp). I also played several hours straight of COD WAW last night and ran realtemp in the background. The max temp reached for each core was in the mid-low 70’s (C) which was an even bigger improvement than that seen at idle. Hardly a scientific test but anecdotally speaking improved temps from improved airflow are achieved.

Pros: Improved airflow
Quality construction
Reasonable price
Easy installation
Muffles some fan noise

Cons: Won’t hold 120×38mm

Welcome

For the time being anyone can post comments w/o having to register. We’ll see how that goes and take it from there. I personnally despise having to register for every blog or forum I visit to make a comment. Please keep the posts reasonably clean and free from links to competitor websites or undesirable sites/material. Any blatant attempt at advertising or grossly offensive material may be be deleted. Links to manufacturer sites, hardware review sites, forums etc. are welcome.

Jim Phillips
anartik.com

For a limited time we are giving away free Arctic Silver 5 with the purchase of select CPU coolers. The included coolers are Thermaltake Blue ORB, Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme(original not RT or BP), Scythe Orochi and Scythe Zipang. The coolers are already on sale and you get free AS5!

Unlike most websites we offer discounted prices on options to items (rather than full-outrageous). AS5 is offered as a discounted option on all our CPU coolers. You will also find things like fans, cpu mounting brackets, fan clips, fan shrouds etc. options discounted over our already low prices when you purchase a CPU cooler from us. Visit anartik.com for full details.

We are down to the last Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme at $49.95. Purchase the last one and I will throw in an extra set of fan clips (we no longer have stock and this set came from my U120E).

Scythe and Thermalright shipment is in 1/8/09. A special intro sale for the new items is on while it lasts. Please note we reserve the right to limit quantities. Sold out Scythe S-Flex 120 and Ultra Kaze 120 fans have been restocked. The Mugen 2 and some other sold out Scythe items are due in on Monday. We now have the Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme RT CPU Cooler for LGA1366/LGA775/AM2. We also have the new Thermalright fan holders in stock as well as all the CPU mounting kits. We were already at the lowest price level on the web but for a few days all the new items are on sale at what I believe is the lowest price you will find anywhere. From Scythe we now have the Reeven core contact cooler, Scythe Kama angle, Kaze Master fan controller, the new bolt thru cpu stabilzer kits, GentleTyphoon fans and the Scythe VGA heatsink set. Visit anartik.com for more information.

Welcome to anartik.com’s blog. Here you will find news from anartik.com and anartik’s comments on various hardware and software. In addition being a programmer by profession you may find information related to the programming profession and definitely the politics of it. You will likely find a variety of information with no limits.