We popped along to Lian Li, the chassis manufacturer, to see what it had in store for 2009.
Priced at a staggering $640, plus tax, Lian Li is introducing the PC-888 full-tower chassis, a limited-edition design that, it hopes, will appeal to the discerning and well-heeled enthusiast.
Looking a little strange to say the least, kind of like a sail, the blue-anodised chassis is hewn from pure aluminium and is manually assembled from 125 custom-designed parts.
The 'El Burj' of chassis certainly cuts a striking profile.
There's a hot-swappable SATA drive-bay that holds four drives, for various RAID formations, and the PC-888 has support for extra-long PSU cables and, of course, a removeable motherboard tray.
We like the fact that the ports - USB2.0, FireWire, eSATA, and audio - hang off one side, at the top, and the omnipresent card-reader is to be found on the right-hand side.
Cooling is taken care of by two 140mm fans at the front - blue, of course, with LEDs - with a rear-mounted 120mm fan. Notice the vents in the rear PCI brackets? Lian Li reckons those make for better cooling.
Turn the knob just below the fan at the back and the internal blue LEDs dim and the fans slow down.
The uniqueness of the PC-888 is cool, sure, but find it hard to stomach the $640 asking price, no matter how bespoke the chassis is. It's also only available in blue, and we reckon that a cool black or soft silver would have been better.
Apparently it takes four times longer to construct this chassis than a standard one. What do you think?
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