Lian Li PC-Q11 Mini ITX Case Review

1. Introduction2. The Zotac H55 ITX WiFi3. The Lian Li PC Q11 Mini ITX Case (Bundle)4. The Lian Li PC Q11 Mini ITX Case (External)5. The Lian Li PC Q11 Mini ITX Case (Internal and Installation)6. Testing Methodology and Performance Results7. Closing Thoughts8. View All Pages

I am a sucker for a well designed aluminum chassis and Lian Li have always been one of the pioneers in this sector. They recently updated their fantastic Q series of compact enclosures with the PC-Q11.

While these designs are based around the tiny ITX standard they allow for people to use a full sized ATX power supply and a standard size optical drive – an omission we disliked with the recent review of the Silverstone Sugo SG07 chassis.

We received the black version for review (Q11B), but they also produce red and silver models, with a white scheme hitting retail in October.

Model	PC-Q11B (black), PC-Q11S (silver), PC-Q11B (black), PC-Q11W (white)
Case Type	Mini Tower
Material	Aluminum
Colour	Silver, Red, White (coming soon) and Black
Motherboard support	ITX
5.25″ bays	1
3.5″ bays	2
2.5″ bays	2
Expansion slot support	2
Front I/O Ports	USB 3.0 x 2 (USB 2.0 compatible). HD Audio
Fans	Single 140x140x25 mm intake fan
Dimensions	200m (w) x 326 mm (h) x 260 mm (d)
Weight	2.42kg

For our system build today we received the excellent Zotac H55-ITX WiFi board which we tend to use in our ITX system builds. It arrives in a miniscule orange coloured box with details of the product on the front and back.

The bundle contains a well written manual, a handy installation guide, WiFi antenna (2), several converter cables, 3 orange sata cables (no 90 degree unfortunately) and a motherboard connectivity fascia for the rear of the chassis.

The motherboard is passively cooled and if it is the first time you have seen a Mini ITX board, be prepared to be blown away by the diminutive size of everything!

We listed the connectivity on the last page, but as you can see above there are more than enough ports, even for the most demanding of enthusiast user, we particularly like to see eSATA included – we use this a lot in the KitGuru offices.

The board is passively cooled, this is a good move, as KitGuru hates small, high speed fans. The Wi-Fi card can be seen above next to the ram slots on the right of the picture.

The mobo is 1156 slot which means it can handle Core i3, Core i5 and Core i7 processors from Intel. We will delve more into the system build later in the article.

The Bios is fully featured and we have taken a plethora of screenshots to show you below.

The Lian Li PC Q11 arrives in a small, very light box which immediately gives away how small this case is going to be. Lian Li mark the box with a color system to ensure you get the right one.

Inside, the product is wrapped carefully with a protective cover and foam on either side. This is more than enough to protect it properly during shipping.

The product ships with a single page to act as a building guide, as well as a full colour sheet detailing other Lian Li products, just in case you want to spend more money. The bundle is comprehensive with screws, standoffs and rubber mounts supplied … they also include a PCI slot cover to allow the routing of internal USB 3.0 cables out of the rear of the case. If you want to use USB 2.0 then there is an adapter cable supplied which connects directly to the header on the motherboard.

The case follows a design similar to the earlier PC Q07 although this one is longer to deliver more internal space.

There is very little to fault with the finish, it is a typical Lian Li product, oozing the highest build standards on the market. There are vents on both side panels which allow the 140mm fan to intake cool air – this is a great concept as it means that the front of the case doesn't have a huge vented hole, ruining the aesthetic appeal. It is nice to see Lian Li updating their connectivity to allow for USB 3.0 front mounted devices, an upgrade from the previous version of the product. There are also Audio connectors on the front panel.

There is a single, full sized 5.25 inch drive bay at the top and Lian Li have opted to include one of their ODD covers meaning any optical drive will perfectly match the colour of the chassis you select. The buttons on the front are cut from aluminum and have a fantastic feel when depressed. While this seems like a minor point to bring up, after using some cheaper far east design cases lately it is something we immediately notice .

The rear has a mounting section for a full sized ATX power supply. This plate can be removed by four thumbscrews, which require only a little pressure to turn. You will also notice that the chassis allows for two mainboard expansion cards which means you can install a dual height graphics card if you wish. It is worth bearing in mind that the case is rather narrow and a dual slot graphics card will make routing troublesome, which we will look at later in the article.

While the removal of the power supply mounting plate is tool-less, each side panel has 8 tiny screws to remove before getting access to the insides. Internally the case is finished to the same exacting standards as the external manufacturing, but as this is a Lian Li product we would be surprised to find anything else.

Immediately it is noticable that Lian Li are supporting the installation of a full sized optical drive at the top, which is going to appeal to many enthusiast users as some ITX chassis require slim line optical drives due to restricted space.

When both side panels are removed, we can get a good overview of the design. Which is quite beautiful in its simplicity. It is constructed from two pieces of aluminum. The panel on the right (if you were looking at the case from the front) is removed to allow for easy installation of the motherboard, more on this shortly.

The 140mm fan is mounted with a dust filter on front of it, and it can be removed by simply pulling it to the right. This makes PSU installation much easier later and its a nice tool less design concept. The only issue is that removing this for cleaning after the system is built is very difficult.

2.5 Inch drives are mounted to the underside of the removable tray at the bottom of the chassis. 3.5 inch drives can be fitted at the same time, on the other side of this plate – which is another fantastic forward thinking idea. Lian Li have included some special screws for the larger 3.5 inch drives, these are rubber mounted to stop vibrations and subsequent noise pollution from this.

Installing our Zotac motherboard is a straightforward process. Simply line up the PCB with the four mounting standoffs and attach with the supplied screws. As you can see above we initially tried to use the Noctua NH U9B cooler, but it didn't fit, unless we removed the power supply from the chassis.

We therefore reverted to our Thermaltake Slim X3 which is a decent low profile heatpipe cooler. It looks small, but unless you are overclocking/overvolting it adequately cools any of the i5 processors we have tested.

The HDD Drive tray is installed with two thumbscrews and takes literally 30 seconds. We used a Corsair AX850 power supply for this build, which is slightly overkill for our media center but it makes for a very quiet, efficient heart of the system.

We also decided to use a passively cooled Sapphire HD5670 Ultimate Edition for this system build – we love this video card and recommend it to anyone looking to build a high performance media center with a focus on image quality.

At this stage it is important to spend a little time routing the cabling and maximising the air flow from the front mounted fan. Obviously with such limited space, there will be some compromises made but it was a reasonably easy process.

We rarely install optical drives in our machines anymore, prefering to handle operating system installation from a USB drive. With a good network and USB devices there is very little need anymore for an internal optical drive, especially with fantastic bluray USB 2.0 players such as the Asus SBC 06D1S-U.In this particular build it also helps to remove cabling and enhances airflow a little. Many people will probably use onboard graphics support on these motherboards, which will allow for more internal space for routing.

The finished system build took a little longer than normal, but as long as you spend more time with preparation, rather than rush the build then you are less likely to run into cabling issues later. Its important to make sure that the processor cooler fan doesn't have a cable blocking movement also. If a graphics card is installed with a fan, then this also needs to be watched, especially as routing is often in this area.

Today we are using a Core i5 655K processor which is clocked at 3.2ghz and is a dual core design with Hyperthreading support. We are using the Thermaltake Slim X3 low Profile cooler with Noctua NT H1 high quality thermal paste. This forms the foundation of a powerful, yet realistic media center.

Processor: Intel 655K Core i5 CPU (review)
Thermal Paste: Noctua NT H1
Power Supply: Corsair AX850 (review)
Memory: 8GB of Hyper X DDR31600mhz by Kingston (review)
Graphics: Sapphire HD5670 Ultimate Edition (single / Crossfire reviews)
Hard Drives: 2.5 inch 200GB and 320GB Fuji
Motherboard: Zotac H55 Mini ITX Wifi

Room ambient temperatures were kept at a steady 25c via air conditioning in our test labs. Idle readings are measured after 30 minutes of testing in the desktop after a fresh boot. We achieved our load results by looping Cinebench R11.5 with Furmark for 20 minutes then taking the highest result throughout this time period.

These are a good set of results for the confined space and the 140mm front intake fan with vents ensures that the components receive adequate cooling.

While we wouldn't recommend people run overclocked systems in a small ITX case such as this we decided to crank the CPU speeds to around 3.6ghz without increasing core voltage.

Processor temperatures only rose by 4-5c under load which is a very good result indeed. Air ambient temperatures increased by a single degree when under load also. It would be possible to raise the overclock higher, but we see no need for a media center system like this – we are already sitting at a solid level of performance with very impressive temperatures.

Recently we have changed our method of measuring noise levels. Ambient noise in the room is kept as low as possible. We measure from a distance of around 1 meter from the chassis and 4 foot from the ground to mirror a real world situation.

The room rates as 20-21dBa – the air conditioning unit in the far corner of the room causes this.

KitGuru noise guide
10dBA – Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves
20-25dBA – Whisper
30dBA – High Quality Computer fan
40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refridgerator
50dBA – Normal Conversation
60dBA – Laughter
70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer
80dBA – City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal
90dBA – Motorcycle or Lawnmower
100dBA – MP3 player at maximum output
110dBA – Orchestra
120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine
130dBA – Threshold of Pain
140dBA – Military Jet takeoff/Gunshot (close range)
160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum

As the system is only using a single 140mm intake fan which spins quite slowly we didn't notice any noise under real world conditions. The Thermaltake cooler is quiet, especially as it is contained behind the chassis wall with no venting system next to it. The case delivers a reasonable level of sound isolation from internal components. Obviously if you use a graphics card with a fan, then this figure will be much higher, but it is a fantastic benchmark figure to build a system around.

The PC Q11 Mini ITX case is another beautifully designed product from Lian Li. The quality of finish is exceptional and the overall build quality is top drawer, there are no sharp edges and attention to detail is high throughout.

The Q11 is an interesting design as Lian Li have allowed for the installation of a full sized optical drive and ATX power supply, these are very strong selling points as media users often have to make a compromise in these key areas. Unfortunately due to the internal space, there will be no way to use an oversized CPU cooler … so either an Intel reference cooler or third party low profile solution, such as the Thermaltake Slim X3 would need to be incorporated into the final build.

There are very few negatives considering the size of the chassis design although a little care with routing is needed before you put the final pieces together. While we used ordinary Intel branded Sata cables, it might be benefical to use right angled connectors to help with spacing near the left hand panel.

Acoustically, the PC Q11 has proven to be a class leader and it is clear to us that Lian Li spent a lot of time during the R&D phase to ensure just enough airflow for a high performance system without creating a racket in the process. It is not often we measure sub 30 dBA noise levels, even if we did use a silent graphics card for the build.

Pricing in the UK is competitive, particularly as this is crafted from two pieces of expensive, high quality aluminum. £85 inc vat seems to be the asking price right now although we noticed the Q11R (red) model was a little more expensive, at £100 inc vat.

KitGuru says: If you have sensitive ears but still don't want to compromise with your build, then the Q11 offers a very tempting solution for a demanding enthusiast user.

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