Computing on Demand PC News & Reviews
When we thought that we had the perfect case for our NAS build, Lian Li came knocking on our door and promised to change our minds. Our current build features the Fractal Node 304 and it has been a great small server / NAS mini-itx chassis that has plenty of storage space. Unseating it will be quite the challenge. Lian Li confidently accepts the challenge.
To get some of the basics out-of-the-way quickly, the Lian Li PC-Q28 is an all aluminum mini-ITX case that spans 227mm wide, 305mm tall, 345mm deep, and weighs in around 7 pounds. The chassis is capable of housing up to 7 hard drives. The storage configurations vary, but for those building a big storage solution, it can potentially work out to six 3.5″ HDDs and a 2.5″ hdd. To boot, you still have an open 5.25″ drive bay for a removable drive or an optical drive. If you are not a storage junkie, the PC-Q28 can support video cards up to 290mm in length (without the HDD cage) and PSUs up to 170mm.
Cooling is handled by two fans, one 140mm fan up front and one 120mm exhaust fan up top. There is filtered air intake on the bottom of the chassis for the front mounted intake fan. Warm air is exhausted from the top. The top mounted fan will pull clean cool air from the front of the chassis and ensure that it passes over your heatsink and PSU cooling fan before exiting. I would have liked Lian Li to provide a side mounted mesh guarded intake, similar to the one on top, for the PSU instead of having it compete for cool air with the CPU heatsink.
