Lian Li PC-XB01 Review & Installation Guide

Value and Conclusions

Justifying the PC-XB01's £70 price tag is made a little difficult the fact that this is an genuinely unique product - there is genuinely nothing else like it on the market right now (note the "right now"), and for die hard Xbox 360 enthusiasts looking for something to make their Xbox stand out I'm sure Lian Li could charge £100 and still sell more than a few. However, for the rest of us, what real advantages does the PC-XB01 offer over the stock setup?

The sad answer is, right now, not a great deal. While operating temperatures with the XB01 are a good deal better, the die shrink from 90nm to 65nm has, for the most part, solved the 360's overheating and red ringing problems, although some would claim the RMA rate is still worse than acceptable. We'd imagine even on a hot day in a humid environment, the stock cooling solution would be able to keep the chips below 80°C. With PC cases, better cooling performance means more overclocking headroom but on the 360 it just means a slightly cooler Xbox - there's no visible performance pay off.

But surely if you are worried that your console might die from overheating the last thing you'll want to do is void the warranty by putting it in a new case. If the PC-XB01 doesn't help, then you've not only forked out £70 for the case, but you've got another Xbox 360 to shell out for too.

With improved cooling performance made somewhat redundant, all the PC-XB01 has left is the low noise advantage, and true to it's claims it is indeed a great deal quieter than the stock Xbox case, and is all but silent when browsing the XBLA store or playing back music, DVDs or games from the hard drive. Slap an actual game into your console however and the silence is shattered as the DVD drive speeds up to it's familiar scream, making the quieter 120mm cooling fan utterly redundant until the November dashboard update which will enable games to be played from the hard disk drive - and even then you'll need to drop more of your cash on a larger hard disk if your game collection runs to more than say, five titles.


There's also the problems of the front panel's design, with memory card and USB hatches which feel far from secure, and a significant amount of wasted space inside the case - it's nice to have space to work but it does make it oh-so-much bigger than a stock 360. There are inch wide gaps at the front and bottom between the case exterior and the main-board that with some extra thought could easily be designed around, and the top of the case is equally generous with the gaps around the DVD and HDD enclosure. These are just a few places where the PC-XB01 could have gone on a serious diet - made a fair bit leaner and more polished than it is right now.


Then there's the inherent risk involved in dismantling a console. We here at bit-tech might not be world class experts (speak for yourself - rich), but we've taken enough technology apart to have a rough idea of what we're doing. Taking the Xbox 360 apart, even with the instructions verged on the tricky at points, but all it takes is patience and the right tools - try to hack at it and you'll invariably break it.

In the end, people who are going to buy the PC-XB01 already know they're going to buy the PC-XB01. They're die hard Xbox 360 enthusiasts, hardware tweakers whose motto in life is "warranty: VOID!" and those wealthy enough to not worry if their Xbox red rings and they have to buy a new one. It's all about having something unique, very moddable and generally pretty good looking.

Sadly, the majority of people, even us included, don't fall into those categories....OK, the warranty:void one is a given. But the fact remains that for most people the loss of extended warranty by transplanting a console from case to case is likely too much to lose.

The PC-XB01 is a unique and highly innovative product - one where no one else has dared step, and for that we give Lian Li big kudos. We fully expect there to be a PC-XB02 and even competing models from other manufacturers before too long if this is really successful. The problem is that £70 plus the sacrifice of our precious three year warranty won't be worth the return for many, but for the very hardcore few; you stopped reading at "installation guide".

• Build Quality
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
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• 6/10

• Features
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• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• -
• 6/10

• Ease of Use
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• -
• 6/10

• Performance
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• 8/10

• Value
• x
• x
• x
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• x
• -
• -
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• 6/10

• Overall
• x
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• -
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• 6/10

What do these scores mean?