Lian Li PC-A55 Case Review: Unfortunate Name Befits the Design
by Dustin Sklavos on June 16, 2012 12:30 PM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- mid-tower
- Lian Li
- ATX
Noise and Thermal Testing, Overclocked
Lian Li's PC-A55 is the first time I've actually been nervous about thermally testing a case. The CPU cores were already pushing the mid-to-high 80s at stock settings under load; how was this whole thing going to fare when I bumped up the clocks and pumped more voltage through the CPU and graphics card? As it turns out, it wasn't going to fare well at all, and I'm thankful we live in an era where our hardware has thermal protections in place. Ten years ago, I likely would've had to replace most of the testbed after this.
On the charts it doesn't look as bad, but keep in mind that the Intel Core i7-2700K's cores were actually hitting 95C with the case elevated, and 98C without. The GeForce GTX 560 Ti was also peaking at 95C. All of this in a room with an ambient temperature of about 24C, a temperature which isn't terribly uncomfortable or unreasonable. If the PC-A55 had a hard time dealing with a stock system, it flat out couldn't deal with any kind of overclocking. What's worse, look at how heat builds up around the SSD and imagine what would happen if a mechanical drive were used.
Our Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo was being pushed as hard as it possibly could and the CPU thermals were still hitting the maximum spec. The normally efficient custom cooler on the ASUS GeForce GTX 560 Ti had just as hard a time, with the fan basically maxing out under load. Lian Li's design has virtually no thermal headroom. With the elevated testbed, the GPU does better, but even so it places last out of our set of cases.
The PC-A55 basically winds up being our worst-case scenario on almost all fronts. While it remains quiet at idle, under load it's very noisy and uncomfortable to listen to, due to the fact that the fans running inside are all going at full bore. As a side note, because of the aluminum shell, the top of the case was actually almost painfully hot to the touch when tested under these conditions. Putting the case on a flat surface helped thermals a bit, but also gave noise one more place to escape, causing it to run even louder.
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i077 - Saturday, June 16, 2012 - link
What about just simply turn the top exhaust fan around and make it an intake? In that way the CPU area will get some fresh air that it desperately need. The CPU fan can be position to the other side of the heat sink and double as an exhaust fan, or just add an 140mm to the back.The power supply positioning is a massive failure though. It has no dedicated intake or out take, and ends up being a pure heat generator tuck away at the bottom corner. If they just poke some hole in the front panel and at the bottom and separate the PSU into its own thermal zone this case could have been something.
Hopefully they do a revision soon, the case does look sharp and uses space wisely.
Pazz - Saturday, June 16, 2012 - link
Shame about the poor thermals but I suppose to be expected when they adopt a vertical system without rotating the mainboard.I do like the small form factor full-ATX idea though since a lot of standard ATX cases are approaching gigantic. The average enthusiast doesn't require 7x 5.25" or 6x 3.5" bays. Particularly now that SSD's are mainstream and optical drives superflous.
PC-A05NB FTW (note I did not type A05FNB)
mbf - Saturday, June 16, 2012 - link
...might just possibly help with cooling in this case.SimKill - Saturday, June 16, 2012 - link
I'm a regular lurker here, but I think in this specific review you've made an unnaturally high number of mentions of the complete model number instead of using words like "it", "it's" etc.Dustin Sklavos - Sunday, June 17, 2012 - link
I think you're just seeing things. Why would I do something like that?erwendigo - Monday, June 18, 2012 - link
Because you have a very bad sense of humor (cheapest). And "we" (more than one) can see it.Dustin Sklavos - Monday, June 18, 2012 - link
Hey, I don't go to your place of business and insult you.AssBall - Tuesday, June 19, 2012 - link
Lian Li might disagree with that statement, relative to how the article was titled.But you can't stay mad at what was essentially a completely honest and well done review. If your product is ass, its ass.
mcbowler - Saturday, June 16, 2012 - link
LIAN LI,Please hire me to design a case.
etrigan420 - Saturday, June 16, 2012 - link
Really?I expected a little more from Anandtech.