Internal Tour

One thing whilst photographing the Lian Li D8000 was that the chassis was actually far too large for our light box for a nice tidy presentation, we we had to improvise as best as we could.

When the side panels are removed the word’ cavernous’  is what springs to our lips and the next would be a wow’ The build quality of the chassis is set to an extremely high level and even though the chassis is manufactured from Aluminium, the product however does feel strong.

In order to access the front drive bays a gentle tug is needed upon the front door and once removed the racks to hold in the hard disk drives are exposed. How many may you ask? Well it seems the Lian Li are not happy to provide the usual standard six internal drive spaces, instead they have opted to house a whopping twenty hard disk drives at once. Obviously no motherboard out on the market supports this amount of drives, however with the addition of add-on cards then this figure is entirely possible. This section also contains two locks (one per rack) in which hard drives can be locked down in order to prevent theft during a possible LAN party session? Well in all honesty we doubt that this product will ever see a LAN partY event at all, due to the sheer size of the case.

A rather interesting discovery is that Lian-Li have implemented a divider between the 420mm radiator and the motherboard, presumably this is to separate heat producing areas from the rest of the chassis. Also additional fans can be mounted here to further cool the aforementioned areas. Lastly this divider can be used as a way of supporting the longer length type cards. The second image shows the strength that has been built into the structure of the case. What he have noticed (bottom left photograph) is that the hard drive bays have been riveted in, rather than the use of screws. The latter method would have been more then preferable as then the consumer can remove these bays as and when needed in order to make way for additional water cooling radiators.

As one can see below is that the Lian-Li PC-D8000 can support two power supplies, which in all honesty is a feature that will be needed should twenty hard drives ever be employed within a RAID or server-based environment.

The back panel is capable of supporting either three 140 or 120mm based- fans, however on the latter the spacings seem a little off and will not be able to utilise a 360mm radiator due to the former mentioned fan spacing issue. In addition though the grill can support a 420mm-based radiator it can only be that of a 20mm based one from such manufacturers like Hardware Labs, which is unfortunate as most 140mm-based radiator suppliers have now adopted the 15mm spacing standard which is the same for the 120mm-based variety.

 The below left photo shows a rather interesting feature of mounting 120mm fans to the side of the HDD racks in order to provide much needed ventilation to the latter-mentioned drives. However let us face it if a consumer were to employ even half the amount of drive space that this product is capable of then some seriously cooling is needed. However this is where we encounter a couple of issues. In the first instance the fans mounts are not set to the industry standard 15mm spacings and secondly as we explained earlier in this review and the HDD bays are riveted on, thus preventing removal for more water cooling radiators. However this issue can be solved by drilling the correct holes in the side fan mounts and taking out the rivets on one set of bays and then mounting the fan attachments to the remaining HDD bay rack-thus allowing for a further radiator.

The optical drive bays is another feature that has been nicely done, though if we are going to be honest a ‘tool-less’ feature on the former should be a standard feature these days. however Lian Li have found a nice-easy way of securing the optical bays which is rather nice.

The cables the lead from the front I/O panel are of an extremely high quality, whilst not utilising a black braid, instead employing a mould plastic in order to keep everything looking nice and tidy.

Since this chassis is geared more for hard disk drive space than the more modern solid state technology, Lian-Li have rectified this slightly by including a 5.25 to to Solid State Drive converter so those users are not left out in the cold. It is worth noting that this is capable of mounting two of the aforementioned drives.

The photos shown below demonstrate quality feel of the wire management in general and the sheer amount of space where one can manage the cables both from the Power Supply Unit and the fan cables. The rubber grommets overlap the holes nicely so this gives the former more of ‘grip’ to allow for thick cables to be pushed through.

The motherboard tray itself is removable and is quite large, more than enough to accommodate the largest of motherboards and by large Lian-Li mean just that. It even makes a normal -sized motherboard looks small and out of place in comparison.

A motherboard tray that can take a dual CPU EVGA motherboard and still make that same tray removable and yet still feel solid is amazing. Finally on the bottom right is where one can install castor wheels for transportation and this is very much needed here as even though the chassis is of an aluminium material based construction, it will still be heavy if a number of hard drives or radiators are installed.

Our final round of photos are a general reminder on how the PC-D8000 looks internally and externally- which is at this point we would say to the manufacture ‘why have you not anodised the inside also’?

Finally what really helps to sell this chassis is its price of only£299 GBP and RRP. If one were to import either a Caselabs or a Mountain Mods chassis then if we include everything such as delivery and import than the fees will be in total twice the amount of the Lian-Li PC-D8000.