Lian Li PC-V358 Review

Lian Li PC-V358 Review - Internals

It's not often we struggle to get inside a case but this one had us reaching for the instructions. There are no latches, screw mounts or other paraphernalia in the side panels and they don't just slide off either. They actually have numerous small ball joint pins around the edges that pop in to sockets on the case itself - no screws or sliding here. It's a very clever system that's both secure and allows for a clean look, although getting them off can be a little hard on your finger nails at first.


The inside is quite an interesting place with storage and fan mounts dotted everywhere. There is a total of six 3.5in hard disk mounts in two cages in the base. These aren't particularly easy to get to but are removable by getting shot of a couple of thumb screws.


For SSDs, the mounts are a little less generic; Lian Li has employed its rubber push-fittings for all storage mounts but with the SSDs, these allow your little 2.5in drives to slot in to holes on the motherboard tray itself.


Needless to say, there's no issue with SATA cable length here and in fact you could probably opt for some super-short cables too and once installed it's actually a fairly neat setup and not unlike many tower setups with SSDs mounted right next to the motherboard. Lian Li has chosen to go the slimline route as far as optical drives are concerned. This is far from a terrible choice, but given the ample room inside it would have made the case a little more flexible to go the 5.25in route.


Cooling-wise, the PC-V358 really has taken things to the competition. There are two front 120mm fans, that sit so that around a centimetre of them pokes up into the top tray while the rest blows over the lower section. There's another 120mm rear exhaust fan and perhaps the most interesting part is a side dual 120mm fan mount (vacant out of the box). This can swing out making installing fans pretty easy, but more importantly, it can also be home to a half-height dual 120mm-fan radiator, with enough room for it and two fans between it and the motherboard.



With ample room inside for a combined pump and reservoir, both custom kits and all-in-one liquid coolers are definitely options here - not bad going for such a small micro-ATX case. PSU's up to 200mm long are fine, with good cable routing to the top section where your graphics card and motherboard sit, and a little space below to hide spare cables too.

Graphics cards up to 330mm are supported however the one fly in the ointment is the CPU cooler height limitation - at 130mm this means tower coolers are out of the question so you'll either need an all-in-one liquid cooler or a low profile cooler. As such, we had to use our mini-ITX test gear and not our usual micro-ATX motherboard and cooler.



Now for the PC-V358's party-piece. We initially wondered what the purpose of the three thumb screws at the back of the case was. A gentle tug on the top of the case with them removed didn't do much, but a quick flick through the rest of the instructions persuaded us to tug a little harder and the whole top section rotated about the front lower corner. This gives fantastic access to the inside and there's no fiddly motherboard tray to deal with either.