Lian Li PC-37A Mini-ATX Aluminum Case

A single 3.5” bay is visible from the outside of the case.  This too has gotten some attention in the way of a molded aluminum cover for your floppy drive.  Much nicer than the stick on types we have seen in the past.

Below the floppy drive we can see the power and reset buttons as well as your power and hard drive activity lamps.  The vent holes you see are misleading.  Most Lian Li cases have a nice filtered intake fan set up.  Unfortunately not present with the PC-37A.  There is an intake of sorts but we’ll get to that in a moment.  At the very base of the front bezel is a small aluminum flap which conceals a mic in, speaker out, USB ports x 2 and a Firewire port.  

  

You also see below that the entire front bezel is removable.  Not a lot of reason for this in my book, because you don’t have an intake filter to clean.  The carbon fiber trim is on both the top and bottom of the bezel.  Pretty hip looking.  I’m wishing someone would make a case with the entire thing covered with this look.  Also below are the two drive covers we noted earlier.  Each is removable as you can see.

        

Moving around to the side of the case let’s you know that even though the case is “technically” a mini-ATX, that begins and ends with the label.  Most mini-ATX boxes have severe board size restrictions because of having such cramped quarters.  Given the length of the PC-37A, we can tell before we open the case up that the added length to the PC-37A will keep your 5.25” drives from butting into your mainboard subsequently giving you room enough for a standard sized board.

The case rear shows some other changes to that allow for you to keep your components of standard size if you so choose.  The most obvious of these is the vertical placement of the power supply.  With the power supply orientation being what it is you can forget about having the standard 80mm exhaust seen in 99% of all cases.  What are present are two 40mm vents you can install fans into so you can have some airflow out the case rear.  Lastly, notice the venting slits along the case rear and between the power supply and I/O plate.  While these aren’t going to provide much ventilation, every little bit helps especially when you are hamstrung with no 80mm rear exhaust.

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