Now that we have seen the PC-V1020 lets go in for a closer look. Firstly, the front. Here, we have very subtle styling. The entire front features a perforated aluminium sheet partly due to having 2 x 140mm fans mounted at the front - these fans are intake and therefore need to pull air into the case. The Lian Li badge can clearly be seen right in the middle this again is metallic. Further up we have 3 x 5.25" drive bay covers, the first has a 3.5" adapter for attaching a card reader or such like device. Above this we have another 2 drive bay covers that have the button and fascia - you can fit the optical drive behind this cover and the button on the cover lines up to the optical drive button. This just keeps things looking consistent, optical drives either come in silver or black and therefore would look very odd without a red cover. Although a small point to remark, its good to see that Lian Li have thought of this, it keeps the styling fluid.

Turning our attention to the rear, at the bottom we have an opening for the PSU and a black plate that is fixed in place via thumbscrews. The PSU has to be installed from this orientation, a little later during installation process we will go into why. Further up the rear panel we have a large black panel. This, you will notice has thumbscrews at various points to keep it fixed. Removing these screws allows the motherboard tray and indeed this entire back panel to move out - again we will cover this later. On this panel we have 8 expansion slot covers with ventilation cut-outs for better airflow control. A fan grill covers the 120mm rear exhaust fan at the back of the PC-V1020 and 2 rubber grommets can be seen above this fan placement to provide a route for USB cables to reach the I/O panel on the motherboard or even route tubing/cabling through.



The eagle eyed amongst you will have already realised there are casters on the PC-V1020. At the front of the case there is a brake system to immobilise the PC-V1020. Construction here is extremely good. The design process here hasn't been rushed, handling these casters and moving the case around using them reveals just how robust they really are. On the underside you can notice a fan filter for the PSU. This can be removed and cleaned easily.



Moving to the top of the case, the front panel controls are concealed behind a small aluminium door. Lian Li adopt this type of front panel control on quite a number of their cases actually. The PC-A77F that we reviewed last year had the same type of front panel control and even the features here were the same.

Here we have ESATA, 4 x USB3.0 ports, and headphone and microphone jack. Outside of this panel there is a large power button and smaller reset button. Sadly though the USB3.0 ports need to attach to the I/O panel on the motherboard. So you will need to have 4 USB3.0 ports on the back of your motherboard, and they will be taken up exclusively for these front panel ports.



Further along the top, towards the back, we have a perforated mesh area for the 140mm top mounted fan. This fan is an LED fan and will emit a nice warm glow to complement the colour of the case.



The way in which side panels are fixed to the PC-V1020 is totally different to the traditional double thumbscrew. Instead we have a mechanism that requires a single screw on each side panel to be undone, and then a plate to be slid back. This system actually works rather well and means that you will never lose the screws since they are always attach to the case. Once the screw and plate have been moved back the side panel simply lifts out. You will also notice that there are two loop holes on either side of the plate. When the screw is fitted and plate moved into the lock position a padlock can be fitted through these loop holes, providing a secure method of keeping intruders out of the case if you are at a LAN party.