Ten years ago, Lian Li was best known for the extremely expensive aluminum housings that many dreamed of but few could afford. But in recent years, Lian Li has become the creator of the cause of the people. Gone is the requirement for everything to be aluminum – nowadays you find a lot of steel, especially in the frames and mesh – but the brilliance of the design has remained, if not improved.
The company’s latest ITX case, the Q58, exemplifies exactly this new way of thinking – it offers a brilliant design, an oh-so-premium look, and – get this – it costs just $130. If you’re familiar with the world of ITX cases, you know this isn’t a lot of money for a small 14.3 liter case, especially with the NCase M1 costing around $210 and Louqe’s Raw S1 for a whopping $330.
So without further ado, let’s see if the Q58 is good enough for our list of the best PC cases. It certainly has some stiff competition, with both the Hyte Revolt 3 and Cooler Master’s NR200P impressing us on the compact case front in recent weeks.
Specifications:
| Type | Mini ITX |
| Motherboard support | Mini ITX |
| Dimensions (HxWxD) | 9.8 x 6.7 x 13.5 in (250 x 170 x 342 mm) |
| Maximum GPU Length | 12.6 inches (320mm) |
| External coves | |
| Internal Bays | SFF power supply: 3x 2.5″ + 1x 3.5″ |
| ATX power supply: 2x 2.5-inch | |
| Expansion Slots | 3x Vertical |
| Front I/O | 1x USB 3.0 |
| USB Type-C | |
| Microphone/Headphone Combination | |
| Other | 3-port fan with RGB hub |
| Front fans | |
| behind fans | |
| top fans | Up to 2x 140mm |
| bottom fans | Up to 1x 120mm |
| side fans | |
| RGB | New |
| damping | New |
External design
The first thing you notice about the Q58, which circles around the outside of the chassis, is its simple design. You’ll find half-height glass panels on the top, half-height mesh panels on the bottom and an aluminum front panel that matches the rest of the case, with a finish that’s split right in the middle.
The side panels of the housing are in painted steel with a fine mesh good enough to serve as a coarse dust filter, but the top panel is in nicer anodized aluminum and the mesh is milled. It’s a rougher mesh, but that’s okay because this is the exhaust location, so it doesn’t need to filter air.
Flip the rear of the chassis over and there’s not much to see other than the motherboard’s IO cutout, three vertical expansion slots, a power outlet, and a trio of thumbscrews. Front IO consists of a single USB 3.0 Type-A port, a USB Type-C port, and a microphone-headphone combo jack.
But don’t let the neat, simplistic exterior fool you. Tucked into the Q58 has a very neat, surprisingly flexible design.
Internal design
Let’s talk a little more about the panels first. The four side panels are all hinged and interchangeable. The default layout (and the one I’d recommend) has the glass panels on the top with the mesh on the bottom, but you can choose to swap it out, or have all the glass on one side and all the mesh on the other side . What you can’t do is have glass on the top of one side and the bottom of the other side – the panels are mirrored, so their hinges won’t support this.
The only thing that stands out about the panels is that two of them seemed very difficult to slide out of their hinges, although Lian Li let us know ahead of time that this was an issue with our sample and that it would be fixed in-store.
On the right side of the case you will find the main part of the motherboard. This fits an inverted ITX motherboard and the bracket for the SFF PSU is factory installed.
Turn to the left and you will see the GPU area.
But if you look at the top of the chassis, you can see a large cavity. Believe it or not, you can even fit a 280mm radiator here, complete with fans. That’s an amazing amount of cooling power for a small case, and definitely something you should be using because you don’t need a different layout.
The bottom of the case supports a single 120mm fan as an inlet below the PSU, although it doesn’t come with fans. The bottom does have magnetic dust filters that are included in the accessory pack.
On the back of the case, at the top, you can also see a fan hub. This is a simple three-port PWM and RGB hub – so not SATA powered, but it does provide a neat way to run all your fans and RGB devices through a single header. Since most ITX motherboards only have one RGB header and the case supports exactly three fans, this is a neat addition, especially at this price.
For storage, you can fit up to three 2.5-inch drives in this chassis and one 3.5-inch drive. These are placed at the bottom, along the top radiator mount, behind the power supply; the last 2.5-inch slot sits secretly between the front frame panels. It’s too tight there to get cables, but Lian Li has a hot-swap bracket built in. Keep in mind that the bottom drive will only fit if you don’t install an intake fan.
The Q58 can support ATX PSUs
However, if you do not want to invest in an expensive SFF or SFF-L power supply, Lian Li also supplies a bracket to convert the chassis to ATX mode. In this mode, the Q58 will still happily swallow 320mm graphics cards, but you’ll be making a few sacrifices. First, the largest supported radiator drops from 280mm to 120mm, and storage options drop to just two 2.5-inch drives. So for best results, we recommend sticking with an SFF power supply.
In its base variant, black with a PCIe 3.0 riser cable, the Q58 costs $130. If you want a model with a PCIe 4.0-compatible expansion cable because you’re dropping an RTX 3000 or RX 6000 graphics card, it’ll cost an additional $30, making the price tag is $160. Meanwhile, the Q58 is also available in white — a finish that costs an additional $10 for both the PCIe 3.0 and PCIe 4.0 variants.