14 DAY TRIAL // Lian-Li Industrial Co. Ltd has recently presented their new mini tower, Mini-ITX compatible chassises called PC-Q12 on its official page.
This aesthetically pleasing case can pack up to four 2.5” HDD drives, but it has no bay to fit any optical unit. The dimensions are very constrained as the width is only 88 mm, the height is just 365 mm and the depth is 208 mm.
It is designed for light computing and thus offers no room for an expansion VGA card.
It does come with an efficient 300W power supply unit rated at 80-Plus efficiency, along with an 80 mm cooling fan on top that seems to be blowing towards the inside of the case although I’d rather have it blow the air out of it.
The front panel also offers the user two USB 3.0 ports that can transfer data at speeds over 10 times faster than USB 2.0, being practically faster than a standard eSATA port that is missing from this small unit, but we can’t really complain about that.
The PC-Q12 will be available in Black or Silver colors for around 159 dollars or 120 euros.
The second enclosure presented on Lian Li’s website is the PC-Q18. This one is also available in two colors of Black and Silver, but it is much more capable.
It can accommodate four 3.5” hard drives in hot swappable bays, and it also has a tray at the bottom capable of holding another two 3.5” drives or three 2.5” ones.
This one has room for a full 5.25” optical unit on top and can also fit inside VGA cards with a length of 340 mm and a CPU cooling unit of up to 160mm in height. It also shows two USB 3.0 ports on the from panel just like its smaller brother.
The PC-Q18 comes with two 140 mm fans that are quite big for such a device. One of them is sitting on top, blowing the hot air from inside the case vertically out while the other is blowing the air towards the hard drives.
The cooling is exceptionally good for such a small system that can handle up to seven hard drives and a normal 5.25” optical unit and the whole case comes in at around $159 or around €120 for European buyers.
Note that the PC-Q18 doesn’t come with a PSU by default, but it only offers compatibility with a standard ATX PS2 one.
