Lian Li XB01: quieter DVD playback but gaming still loud

With the ink on an extended warranty to cover Red Ring of Death incidents only just dry, it might seem crazy to take apart your XBox 360 – voiding the guarantee in the process – and decant the contents into a new casing. That’s what Lian Li are suggesting, however, with their XB01 Cooling Chassis; bit-tech have just had theirs in the mail, and set about getting their donor 360 naked to post some first impressions.

It’s a mixed bag, from the sound of it, and how helpful the XB01 will be to you depends on what exactly you use your XBox 360 for. The console is apparently silent without a disc present and much quieter when playing back DVDs, but as soon as a game is in it’s back to the usual turbine-hall noise levels. Until Microsoft allow for games to be played from the hard-drive, or someone comes up with a way to fool the 360 into accepting a quieter DVD drive, it looks like we’re stuck with the noise.

In terms of the XB01 itself, build quality is reported as fair though not up to the usual Lian Li standards. bit-tech describe it as being “built to a cost – a very reasonable cost” and lacking the “usually high Lian Li level attention to detail”. Whether it’s worth $150 remains to be seen.