When you celebrate an anniversary you might go out for a few drinks, perhaps a meal, pop open a bottle of champagne and make a toast to the occasion. Not Lian Li though, who has a history of celebrating its anniversaries by producing chassis that take the humble PC case and turn it into something unique and memorable.
Limited to a production run of just 500 units, it’s certainly bound to become an extremely exclusive purchase thanks to its unique appearance and design, but is the PC-888 actually a good case underneath the crazy design? Let’s find out.There’s just no way to confuse the PC-888 with any other chassis currently available – its styling and look are totally unique. Inspired by the shape of a sail (and probably this hotel in Dubai we’d care to venture) the PC-888 breaks the boxy mould of modern PC chassis with a deliciously curved front fascia that’s like nothing we’ve seen before. It’s great to see a finally finally doing something different with case design and while we’re not too sure if it’ll catch on, it’s certainly innovative.
The entire case, inside and out, has been built from high quality blue anodised aluminium, and is a also welcome change from the sea of black, silver and gun metal chassis we see on a day to day basis. While these plain colours are fine, we can’t help but think that they’re becoming the new beige to some degree – what’s wrong with a bit of colour here and there after all?
The front panel housing atop the PC-888 is also where you’ll find the case’s power and reset buttons, along with a precision cut Lian Li logo. The power button and Lian Li logo are both subtly backlit with blue LEDs, and when powered look great, although the “spike” and accompanying housing atop the case are purely decorative (and shouldn’t be used as a carry handle).
Taking a look inside the PC-888 though reveals the gorgeous blue anodised aluminium interior, with absolutely every internal surface getting the funky blue treatment and it looks fantastic. All too often chassis manufacturers (Lian Li included) produce a chassis that looks great from the outside, but within are all grey and poorly finished – it’s great to see that Lian Li hasn’t skimped.
Idle performance is absolutely fine with the fans set at either low or full speed, but CPU load temperatures were admittedly very poor – the PC-888 is one of the hottest PC chassis we’ve tested with its fans set to low, with the CPU running a full 9°C hotter under load than in the CPU champ, the Silverstone FT01. Setting the fans to full speed does improve things a little, resulting in a drop in CPU temperature of 2°C.
We’ve seen in the past that the best cases for CPU cooling effectively surround the CPU with intakes and exhaust fans, but here the cooling is a very conventional front to back setup and the CPU temperatures, while perfectly safe, just aren’t able to compete.
