Without the front tempered glass panel we can easily see inside the chassis and observe some of the features. The most eye-catching factor from this angle are the trio of 120mm cooling fans which are installed as intakes. These fans push air into the secondary chamber which will host the PSU and storage drives.
Lian Li has designed PC-O8 to have an especially spacious internal layout – being able to detach the front panel and due to the positioning of the motherboard tray it is possible to reach areas you typically wouldn’t be able to in a conventional case.
The main chamber is the area for installing the motherboard. The motherboard tray can accommodate ATX, M-ATX and Mini-ITX form factors and Lian Li has placed cut-outs and respective rubber grommets at the bottom, side and top of this tray.
Unfortunately, unlike the secondary chamber, this main area has no active cooling which is something of a disadvantage. It’s always a valuable asset having cooling fans driving air across the motherboard – especially if you’ve just invested in some M.2 drives.
We’d have liked to see additional cooling fans or even the ability to house some cooling fans directly next to the trio of 120s at the front to provide this as an option.
Over on the other side of PC-O8 we have the secondary chamber which plays host to the HDD cage, PSU mounting and the RGB lighting hub.
This HDD cage is modular and can house up to six 3.5” HDDs and two 2.5” HDDs (see the installation page for the explanation of how this cage works).
As a common inclusion the PSU sits on a blanket of rubberised material to cushion it and supply some anti-vibration.
At the front there is a perforated mesh area which also acts as a dust filter – this filter can be removed and cleaned after first detaching the top aluminium panel.
Observing some of the features of the main chamber we get a sense of how finely designed PC-O8 is. Every aspect of this chassis is engineered to an extremely high-standard, even the smallest of details.
There are eight PCI expansion slot covers which have the thumbscrews tucked away – the protective cover needs to be removed before any of these PCI covers can be detached.
A 120mm rear exhaust sits above these covers and is responsible for expelling unwanted air from the air around the CPU/cooler.
Located at the very top of this main compartment are two circular cut-outs with accompanying mounting holes. Two 120mm cooling fans or a 240mm radiator can be attached to the top of PC-O8 and there is a corresponding dust filter which slides out the rear of the chassis.
By default this area is closed off via an aluminium panel which is fixed to the top of PC-O8 – this panel can be removed to encourage better airflow if cooling fans or indeed a radiator is installed.
