Final Thoughts
If it hadn't been for the Corsair Obsidian D800 that I tested several months ago, the Lian Li PC-V2120 would likely be my all-time favorite case in terms of features, ease of use and expandability. The minimalistic external aesthetics might not be for everyone, especially if you are fond of radical designs, LED fans and cathode lighting, but it certainly is beautiful in its own right. The brushed aluminum looks great and eliminates the concern of chipping paint.
The internals can look a bit intimidating at first but everything is positioned with reason. This is one of the easiest cases I've ever worked with. Tool-less everything virtually eliminates the need for a screwdriver with most installations. Cable management isn't stellar but with so much room and no side panel window, there's not much need to try and impress with perfect cable routing.
Some of my favorite features of the Lian Li PC-V2120 include the modular drive cages, the top 120mm fan port covers, multiple hard drive / SSD support and the caster wheels. Watercooling users should be able to mount up to a triple 120mm radiator in the roof of the chassis and have plenty of room inside for a reservoir, pump and plenty of tubing. There are also two outlets at the rear of the case in case your cooling loop needs to run outside the chassis.
Those using the chassis for an extreme gaming setup shouldn't have any clearance issues with multiple full size graphics cards.
Once wired up with some spare extension cables, the integrated fan controller worked great. At full speed, the fans in the chassis are pretty quiet; the only real noise came from the heatsink fan. At the minimum setting, you could barely tell the system was even powered on. I chose to run at this setting since I value a quiet computer over a highly overclocked system.
I could only find a few things that could use improvement on the PC-V2120. First, I feel that Lian Li should include four 3-pin fan extension cables for use with the integrated fan controller. None of the four fans I used in the case could reach the controller without an extension cable. Second, all of the sharp edges in the chassis should be taken care of. The majority of commonly accessed areas were adequate, but areas like the drive cages still remained sharp and could result in some nasty cuts if you aren't careful.
While I do like the caster wheel system, the manual brake needs some improvement. On our review sample, the Allen bolt used to secure the brake block in place came loose over the course of a week, rendering itself useless. This can be fixed by tightening up the bolt again, but Lian Li should have used some tread locker from the factory to prevent this from happening in the first place.
Overall, the Lian Li PC-V2120 will make a great case for extreme water-cooling, a gaming PC station, or a server with multiple hard drives. Users with average hardware might find the $400-430 price tag a bit excessive, however.