The side panels are clipped into plastic grips and secure the panel well. There is no isolator so the panels are free to vibrate, however with the small size of chassis, there probably won’t be much you will install that will vibrate.
Drives or a fan can be installed in the base of the chassis, this plate can also be removed. We test fitted the Sapphire Radeon R9 380 Compact ITX graphics card and we didn’t need to remove this plate/bracket, though we would recommend doing so if you intend to install a gaming card.
Test Build
We included an optical drive in our build but solely due to the slot provided in the front of the chassis. We would have liked to see a version without this slot, we are not fans of optical drives and rarely install them. If you do still prefer or require an optical drive, the LG GS40N optical drive is a solid drive, but it will need to be a slot loading laptop drive.
- Processor: Intel i7-6700K
- Motherboard: EVGA Z170 Stinger
- Graphics: 2GB Sapphire Radeon R9 380 Compact ITX OC
- Memory: 16GB Crucial Ballistix Sport LT White DDR4
- Drives: Crucial BX200 480Gb
- Cooler: Noctua NH-L9i Low Profile
- PSU: 500W Silverstone SX500-LG Strider
- Optical: LG GS40N DVD+/-RW
On with the test build shots and we have included some interim shots without the PSU installed. The Sapphire Radeon R9 380 Compact ITX OC is a snug fit and the power connector is facing the front of the chassis.
This turned out not to be a problem and as the card is so close to the side panel, there is no alternative.. We managed to fit the EVGA Z170 Stinger IO shield cowl with a little fettling, and we didn’t remove the panel in the bottom of the chassis to test component clash, which there were none.
Lian Li PC-Q21 Mini-ITX Tower Chassis Review
Packaging - 9.5
Features - 9.5
Build - 9
Component Compatibility - 8
Price - 9
Consumer Experience - 9.5
9.1
Overall we cannot fault this chassis, the Lian Li PC-Q21 is pretty much a perfect mITX chassis at the size limitations of the form factor. The only problem with the chassis is the component availability, though that is slowly fixing itself, and not the little Lian Li PC-Q21's fault. If you want to buy the smallest chassis with the biggest potential, this is it.
