Overall and Final Verdict
When the Lian Li PC-10N came in I was confident that it would live up to the high expectations that I have developed for all Lian Li cases over the years. In a lot of ways, it does just that. First you are getting an all-aluminum design with top notch fit and finish; these are both things you will find on all Lian Li cases and what sets them apart from a lot of the competition. Where I was disappointed was with some of the details. First it is completely out of Lian Li’s control, but the black aluminum finish attracts finger prints amazingly quick. I also felt the overall wire management in the PC-10N was basically nonexistent due to their new rail design. It really is a shame because I do love the idea of the rail design and I suspect this helps them keep their costs down as well, meaning more people can have access to Lian Li designs, but in the end the lack of wire management killed it for me.
Inside the case as well I noticed that the dual fan mount that swings over top of the CPU caused the PC-10N to have a limited height for CPU coolers. If you are water cooling you would be fine (and that is what this case is designed for) but you will have to be selective when picking a tower cooler. I think that same fan mount would be much better used directly over the video cards as a way to feed them cool air, and height issues wouldn’t be there as well. Also inside was my complaint about the color of the interior as a whole. With most companies moving to painted or finished interiors the pure aluminum finish inside the PC-10N does stand out more, although this is partly due to the cases price range.
The main saving grace for the PC-10N is its clean styling and lite weight. If you have no choice but to go with a full ATX build but you want to still be able to take your PC to LANs easily then this design is going to work very well for you. At the end of the day I wanted so badly to love the PC-10N but I ran into a few issues that would prevent me from wanting to use this for any of my builds. With that in mind, all of the issues I had with the case were all on the inside, if someone were to be less picky that I, considering there isn’t a side panel window most of the issues could be ignored while you enjoy the clean styling of the PC-10N.