Lian Li PC-Q25 Mini-Q SFF Chassis Review

The Build and Finished Product

After sliding the hard drives into the hot swap bays, there isn't really much of mounting involved. You literally just slide them in until you feel the clips plug into the drive. That is why this thumbscrew is on the right side of the bays. It allows you to move an inner bit of metal that will slide down and keep the drives from moving outward.

The assembly sort of happens in layers due to the way components are oriented inside the chassis. At this stage I went ahead and added a couple of SATA cables and the GPU to the Zotac Atom Mini-ITX board I use for such occasions.

Just for demonstration purposes, I went ahead an installed a pair of 2.5" drives I had on hand to give you an idea of how it looks installed. In hindsight I would move the right drive further right to allow the card better air flow, but I actually didn't keep this aluminum panel inside the build as I set it in my living room.

At this point I have all of the modular wires attached where they need to be and the case is pretty much ready for the power supply and we can get to testing things out.

A modular power supply is a must in a chassis this compact. Since the motherboard tray sits flush with the panel that covers it, there is little room to hide anything. The area behind the hot swap panels offers a bit, but you don't have room for a full assortment of unused wiring really. For what I have installed, I couldn't be more pleased with the build thus far.

Here is where I think I may have gotten way ahead of myself. The intended power supply just isn't going to work, and I really love this SilverStone PSU for its clean and modular setup. Looks like I have to pull out "old Betsy"!

Good thing I had this lying around the house! The HX520 is short enough to allow connectivity and room for the attached cabling, and still fit the 170mm restriction.

This is something minor, but since it is what I am looking at now for my HTPC I really wish whoever left the crumbs from some sort of cheesy potato chips in my packaging wasn't related to the guy who can't fit the sticker in the assigned dent. I know the price is relatively low, but do we have to cut corners like this?

With everything closed back up I was ready to power up the PC-Q25 and see how well it breathes. This is where I would assume the power button should have lit up blue possibly. At first I figured I had the pins backwards, but after some tinkering, I found the LED is just dysfunctional. I was going to not plug it in for use in my HTPC setup, but this just makes it a non-issue for me.