Lian Li PC-Q17 Mini-ITX Case Review

1. Introduction2. Packaging and Bundle3. Lian Li PC-Q17: Exterior4. Lian Li PC-Q17: Interior5. System Installation6. Testing: Thermals and Acoustics7. Closing Thoughts8. View All Pages

Testing a case consists of finding out how the chassis deals with heat generated by the installed components, and how much noise it produces while doing so.

To create excess heat, I used AIDA64 to stress both the CPU and GPU for 15 minutes. After 15 minutes, I recorded the maximum temperatures for each component to report here.

To test the Lian Li PC-Q17, I installed the following components:

• Asrock X99E-ITX/ac motherboard
• Intel 5960X CPU
• Dynatron R24 cooler
• 2x4GB of Panram Ninja V DDR4 3000MHz
• Sapphire R9 285 ITX GPU
• Corsair SF600 PSU
• OCZ Trion 150 SSD

Thermal dynamics

Out-of-the-box, the single 120mm fan included with the PC-Q17 is configured to exhaust air out of the chassis. This is a sensible move, as if there is only one fan in a case, ideally it would be drawing hot air out – rather than pushing air in to the case with nowhere for it to go.

As the temperature charts show, the 120mm exhaust fan keeps temperatures in-check, although a beefier cooler would be able to do a better job than the cheap Dynatron cooler than comes bundled with the Asrock motherboard.

Ideally, I would have liked to have some cool air being brought into the chassis, though. I think this would be best achieved by using the two 80mm fan mounts at the rear of the case – if they were occupied, intaking air, while the 120mm fan remained exhausting air, I think temperatures would benefit. However, Lian Li only saw fit to include a single fan and it does the job just fine.

Acoustics

As there is only one fan, the PC-Q17 is as quiet or as loud as you configure it. With a ‘silent' fan profile enabled, I could not hear the fan at all – but if you run it at 100% speed it quickly becomes intrusive. The fan itself is good quality, too, and there is no mechanical noise coming from the bearing or anything like that – the only noise produced comes from the fan blades spinning, and this is entirely up to you to configure to your liking.

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