Lian Li’s chassis are renowned for their all-aluminum construc-
tion and superb build quality, but are also known equally well
for costing a fortune and featuring questionable design choices.
The mid-tower PC-8FI, thankfully, brings the legendary build
quality, adds some nice new toolless touches, and for the most
part eschews silly design elements—aside from a giant spider-
shaped side window, that is.
The PC-8FI’s drive-bay complement includes three optical
drive bays (one with a front fl ip-down bezel, and one with a 3.5-
inch adapter preinstalled) and six toolless 3.5-inch drive bays,
one of which can be transformed to hold two 2.5-inch drives
with the use of an included adapter. The fan loadout isn’t the
most comprehensive we’ve seen, but three 12cm red LED fans
still manage to keep air moving through the case, and there’s
room at the top of the case for a 14cm exhaust fan. Lian Li even
includes an extra mesh fan-cover for that hole.
The case’s interior is generally well appointed: The
motherboard tray includes the now-requisite CPU backplate
cutout as well as several non-grommeted cable-routing holes.
The PC-8FI also includes Lian Li’s toolless PCI expansion slot –
securing mechanism, and it works better on this chassis than we
remember it working on previous models. It only covers seven
of the case’s eight expansion slots; the top one is used as a pass-
through for the case’s front-panel USB 3.0 cable.
Unfortunately, the PC-8FI isn’t without its annoyances.
If you plan on routing the 8-pin ATX power cable behind the
motherboard tray, you need to do so before installing the
motherboard, or it won’t fi t through the routing hole. And you
won’t be able to run a graphics card measuring over 11.2 inches
long unless you can fi gure out a way to run a computer without
a hard drive. In other words, oversize videocards will only fi t ifyou remove the hard drive cage entirely. And what kind of life
is that?
Finally, the PC-8FI doesn’t match the cooling prowess of
some of the other cases in this roundup. Without side or top
fans, CPU cooling is good but not great. And the GPU could
defi nitely benefi t from more airfl ow. The garish spider-shaped
side window will not be to everyone’s taste; if it doesn’t suit you,
you can save $40 or so by going for the black or silver versions
of this case.38 | MAXIMUMPC | JAN 2011 | http://www.maximumpc.com
LUXURY TOWERS
VERDICT$220, http://www.lian-li.com^7
LIAN LI PC-8FILian Li’s PCI expansion slot–retention
mechanism—sometimes the fi rst thing
we remove from one of its cases—is
better than ever.You know what else is red and black? A Radeon 5970,
which won’t fi t in this enclosure.The PC-8FI ships with a mesh cover for an optional
14cm fan. We wish the fan came with it, too.You know what else is red and black? A Radeon 5970,Lian Li PC-8FI
This all-aluminum tower is more sensible than
the last Lian Li case we testedYou know what else is red and black? A Radeon 5970, You know what else is red and black? A Radeon 5970, The PC-8FI ships with a mesh cover for an optionalLian Li’s PCI expansion slot–retention
mechanism—sometimes the fi rst thing
we remove from one of its cases—is
better than ever.We don’t get Lian Li’s spider obsession, but the rest of the PC-8FI
is quite handsome.