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Lian Li PC-C36 MUSE home theater case

Lian Li PC-C36 MUSE home theater case

Installation

Building a working PC into the PC-C36 enclosure first required removing enough internal components to facilitate motherboard installation. To provide clearance, we opted to remove the power supply, both drive cages, and the linker bar to get as much working space as possible.

First, the TFX power supply is unscrewed and removed by sliding straight out the rear of the case.

The rear PSU panel.

The rear PSU panel.

The HDD tray is removed with four machine screws: two in the linker bar and two on the case side.

HDD tray with visible linker bar screw.

HDD tray with visible linker bar screw.

To remove the optical drive tray, first remove a single thumb screw, then slide the unit toward the back of the case.

Optical tray with thumb screw visible.

Optical tray with thumb screw visible.

The optical drive tray is also affixed to the case with four retainers, which allow for a secure hold with only a single thumb screw.

Sliding the drive tray backward frees it from four of these retainers.

Sliding the drive tray backward frees it from four of these retainers.

Finally, we arrive at as spacious a base for motherboard installation as this HTPC enclosure can provide.

The bare essentials.

The bare essentials.

Once the case is stripped, the case fans become apparent. The PC-C36 sports a single 70mm slim fan on each side. There are three possible positions on each side for these fans, presumably depending on the hardware configuration inside.

Slim fans provide slim cooling.

Slim fans provide slim cooling.

Lian Li designed the case specifically for mATX motherboards. As such, motherboard risers are already attached to the base. The risers that Lian Li used for this application are extra high, lifting the motherboard off the bottom of the case just enough to allow for some creative cable and wire routing inside.

We appreciated these extra tall riser posts.

We appreciated these extra tall riser posts.

Installing the motherboard into the Lian Li PC-C36 MUSE demonstrates just how tightly all the components must fit to maintain a home theater friendly form factor. The remainder of the inside capacity will soon be stuffed with drive trays and power supply.

Our test motherboard fits perfectly inside the PC-C36.

Our test motherboard fits perfectly inside the PC-C36.

One of the selling points of the PC-C36 enclosure is the ability to use a standard PCI-Express video card. For this purpose, Lian Li provides a riser card that installs into the motherboard’s PCI-Express slots and allows horizontal installation of one video card and one other expansion card. By default, Lian Li has installed a back plate with two expansion card slots arranged horizontally.

The riser card allows horizontal installation of a video card.

The riser card allows horizontal installation of a video card.

In our installation, the riser card proved to be a bit of trouble. Lian Li seems to have designed for a mATX motherboard with the 1x PCI-E slot to be the top slot, with the 16x slot below. Our test motherboard motherboard is configured with the 16x in the first position and the 1x in the second, so the riser card doesn’t align with the back plate. With our motherboard configuration, we were unable to install our video card because the edge of the card lined up one slot away from the case’s back plate.

This makes it possibly troublesome to use an existing hardware configuration with the case, but it becomes simply a another factor to keep in mind if designing an entire system at one time. To ensure complete compatibility with the PC-C36, a motherboard should be chosen that has the PCI-E slots in the expected order. Since Lian Li provides two back plate possibilities, the user could alternatively choose half-height riser cards, but that will severely limit video card options.

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Comments

  1. jared
    jared Nice - if bluray support wasn't so crappy in the HTPC scene I wouldn't mind grabbing one of these. The case is very sleek :D
  2. Komete
    Komete Great review. Those HDD temperatures are a little concerning. Heats a killer. Looks great though. In the last picture, that DVD player with the yellow and orange label is wrecking the perfection of your setup.lol
  3. Komete
    Komete Oh the HDD light and the CPU light... is it detracting while in operation? Sometimes those little LED lights seem to flash straight at ya.
  4. GHoosdum
    GHoosdum
    Komete wrote:
    Great review. Those HDD temperatures are a little concerning. Heats a killer. Looks great though. In the last picture, that DVD player with the yellow and orange label is wrecking the perfection of your setup.lol

    Yes, that's my parents' cheapo progressive scan player that I threw in the media center when mine bit the dust. I've been meaning to take that sticker off of there... I should have for this photo op!
    Komete wrote:
    Oh the HDD light and the CPU light... is it detracting while in operation? Sometimes those little LED lights seem to flash straight at ya.

    They can get a bit distracting. I'd personally unplug them for regular use in the media center if they were in line of sight.
    Gargoyle wrote:
    I'm not sure I like the way the optical bay looks on the front. I know it would limit choices, but I think the case would look a lot better if it just had a slot for slot-loading drives.

    I don't actually have a photo in the review that's a good representation of the drive door. It looks better than you'd think, just matching piece of aluminum that can be attached to the drive door with double stick tape. I didn't stick it on because I was only performing a temporary installation for the review. The pic of the front of the case shows it with the fastening tape that was used for packing still affixed, making it appear a bit odd.
    jared wrote:
    Nice - if bluray support wasn't so crappy in the HTPC scene I wouldn't mind grabbing one of these. The case is very sleek :D

    It definitely captures Lian Li's design philosophy, leading to a nice sleek front panel.
  5. Garg
    Garg Nice review, GH.

    I'm not sure I like the way the optical bay looks on the front. I know it would limit choices, but I think the case would look a lot better if it just had a slot for slot-loading drives.
  6. BobNel Would a full atx motherboard fit ?, there looks to be some space between the edge of the micro atx board and the psu.
  7. GHoosdum
    GHoosdum No, although there is definitely some space there, it is not enough to fit a full-size ATX motherboard.
  8. Jim is it possible to use this with a PCI (not express) riser card? i was thinking of getting this case but i wondered since the riser is "all in one" and has pciex1 and x16, i wondered if i got a standard PCIe x1 riser card and a stanard PCI riser card, if it would work, since those riser cards only "rise" by 1 unit, or slot. if i were to have the x1 on teh bottom slot and a PCI on the top slot, how would i go about doing that? do they make risers on flexible ribbon cables so you can adjust where they are?

    thanks. good review. pics and descrips were very helpful.
  9. GHoosdum
    GHoosdum I would assume you can indeed use a full-height PCI card, provided you use a different riser card, if you can find it. Keep in mind that my fitment troubles came from a discrepancy between the motherboard and the provided riser card.

    If your Micro-ATX motherboard has a 1x PCI-E slot and a normal PCI slot, I'd recommend seeing if you can get your PCI-E and PCI cards with half-height bracket.

    Or, if you can't find them and your cards' PCBs are not full width, you can take the attachment bracket off the back of the card and fashion a new one using the blank out of the back of the case. I've done it before using a drill and a dremel for a PCI video card I once owned.

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