Lian Li Tyr PC-X1000 Case Review

Interior

Accessing the X1000’s innards is easily done by unfastening the top mounted thumbscrew catches on either side panel, revealing the silver aluminium internal fixtures. However, while we love the ease of access to your case’s insides, the side panels, despite their height, are only attached at their top and bottom, with no catches or thumbscrews between to further secure the panels.

The case's interior is divided into three separate thermal chambers with the roof compartment for optical and hard disk drives, the large central compartment for the core hardware and the lower compartment for the power supply and more hard disk drives.

The cooling layout for each chamber is excellent, with a total of three 140mm intake and two 140mm exhausts making for a positive air pressure environment. The fans are also in close proximity to the core hardware with unobstructed airflow. The central compartment is, unsurprisingly the best equipped, with two 140mm fans blowing cool air directly onto your CPU and GPU. These two fans are mounted into a removable housing behind which is an easily removable dust filter – a vital inclusion for a high airflow case. The lower 140mm fan is mounted into a similar, smaller, mounting, and the PSU intake is also dust filtered, it’s great to see a manufacturer paying so much attention to not only airflow, but also to keeping the interior of a case dirt and dust free.


There are plenty of other great touches in the X1000’s interior that make this case stand out from the crowd. Both the upper and lower triple 3.5in hard disk cages are easily removable for simple drive installation, and each is pre-fitted with rubber vibration dampening mount points to help silence those mechanical drives. For those who’re making the jump to an SSD though, there are two tool-less 2.5in drive bays fitted to the floor of the central compartment.

The case’s toolless fittings are, for once, also a highlight, especially the expansion card retention clips. These small levers are a snap to open, and clamp back down firmly with a rubber pad and metal pin securing your expansion cards in place. There are also no less than eight expansion card slots, giving you enough room for even the largest multi-GPU array. The 5.25in drive bays also benefit from toolless fittings, with a rubber backed latch firmly locking your drive into place, although you’ll need to remove the top hard disk cage to fit the drive in the first place.


The central compartment also benefits from two oft-omitted features in the forms of a fully removable motherboard tray and a card retention bar. The motherboard tray can be removed via the right hand side of the case, but is easily reinstalled after even the largest CPU cooler has been fitted before sliding into place and secured with two rear fitted thumb screws. The card retention bar, while removable, can be used to lock expansion cards in place, particularly useful for heavier PCI-E graphics card which are prone to “droop” once install if not supported.


On top of these numerous welcome touches, the X1000 also boasts top quality cable management and routing options. There are numerous gaps and holes between the three compartments through which to route cables, as well as a plenty of room behind the removable motherboard tray.With the ease of access thanks to the easily removed side panels and generous spacing of the interior it really is very easy to produce a neat and tidy case in hardly any time at all, although a few more cable ties included in the box wouldn’t have gone amiss.

Perhaps the only snag we found with the X1000’s interior was its lack of watercooling mounts. While Lian Li do include the obligatory rubber-lined ports for tubing, there's no way to fit standard 120mm radiators inside the case without cutting into that gorgeous aluminium exterior. In its defence though, this case is clearly targeting the very top end of air cooling, so we can’t judge it too harshly, but its competition from CoolerMaster and Silverstone do both offer comprehensive watercooling options in comparison.