We were very impressed by this case, being one of the best cases we’ve seen to date. Its manufacturing quality is outstanding and while other steel/aluminum hybrid cases have only the front panel and front door in aluminum, this case has also the side and top panels made from this noble material. This makes this case lighter than other hybrid products we’ve seen so far.
This case is clearly targeted to users that go to LAN parties or like to carry his or her PC around, as it features a real lock on its front door, a hook for installing a pad lock in order to prevent people from opening your PC and thus stealing its components, a very high-end door latch mechanism that prevents the door from opening while the PC is being transported and a very robust construction.
It will also please average users, with its impeccable finishing, three 120-mm fans, rubber rings that prevent noise generated by the hard disk drives from being propagated to the case, side panels with foam sheets attached to reduce noise, a sliding mechanism that facilitates a lot the installation of all kinds of disk drives, one eSATA port (which is great as more and more users are preferring to use eSATA-based external HDD’s for data backup and transportation) and four USB ports (the majority of cases only provide two).
For the high-end user it also provides pre-drilled holes for installing an external water cooling solution.
Metal Boned K10 features five internal bays for hard disk drives, which is more than enough for even very high-end users.
And then comes pricing. This case can be found at Newegg.com for USD 120, making it a case with one of the best cost/benefit ratios around: it provides high-end features at a proportionally low price. Of course there are cheaper cases around, but not with the same quality and features of this case and not with all external panels made of aluminum.
The only problem we saw with this case was with the two washable air filters. Due to transportation they weren’t in place. Since this is case targeted to people that will carry his or her PC around, this shouldn’t happen. The problem is that you need to remove the frontal panel – meaning unscrewing a lot of screws – to reach these filters. We think Lian Li should have used a more practical solution here (something more similar to what Antec used on their Sonata III 500, for example). If you buy it, don’t forget to remove the front panel to check whether the filters are in place or not while you are building your PC.
