Lian Li PC-7 H Aluminum Case

The bezel itself snaps into place via a clip in each corner.  Removal is as simple and easy by just pulling the cover back and off the main chassis.  The upper four 5.25" drive bay covers snap into place by means of two small nipples per side as you can see below.

  

Moving down to the floppy drive bay covers we find that these are part of a three drive rack.  This is held in place by three thumbscrews that when removed, allow the rack to simply slide out.

  

At the bottom of the PC-7's face we were happy to find two 80mm intake fans with a removable filter to keep dust out of your system.  Access is tool free by pulling up and out of the filter cover.  Start to finish; you can remove the front bezel, access and clean the filter with an air duster and then have everything back together inside of a minute.  Something else you can see in the pics above are two small LEDs mounted at a 45 degree angle.  More on these shortly.

  

The rear of the Lian Li PC-7 shows us nothing too noteworthy.  The rear 80mm fan grill is cut into the aluminum that makes of the case just as it was on the front bezel.  This is also similar to the blow hole on the case roof.  Unfortunately there is no included fan in either spot.  The power supply area is set up a bit differently than other boxes.  A PSU plate is here allowing the power supply to be installed and removed from the back.  With no removable motherboard tray, which we'll get to in a second, this is nice to see.  Something else that was nice to look at was the carbon fiber strip visible from a top down view of the front bezel.  I've said this a few times now, but I would love to see an entire case made of carbon fiber.

     

Both side panels are secured by two thumbscrews each.  Sliding the panels on and off is as close to effort free as you can get.  Looking inside the PC-7 we see the hallmark Lian Li high polish aluminum.  The upper support brace provides structural integrity to the case as well as a great place to tuck extra power cables behind.  The edge of this is protected by a thin plastic strip to keep you from cutting yourself.  I want to point out that with the plastic cover off, the edge is not particularly sharp.  For that matter, there were virtually no sharp edges on the PC-7 which is one of the reasons, Lian Li has the reputation they do.

What was very conspicuously absent was a removable mainboard tray.  This is the first Lian Li case I've ever seen missing a mobo tray.  Given that the PC-7 is designed to be an economically priced model, this really isn't worth losing points over.  Folks buying economy cases generally aren't going to be upgrading major components every few months.
 

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