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
Testing Methodology
For testing Micro-ATX and full ATX cases, we use the following standardized testbed in stock and overclocked configurations to get a feel for how well the case handles heat and noise.
| ATX Test Configuration | |
| CPU |
Intel Core i7-2700K (95W TDP, tested at stock speed and overclocked to 4.3GHz @ 1.38V) |
| Motherboard | Gigabyte GA-Z68MX-UD2H-B3 |
| Graphics Card |
ASUS GeForce GTX 560 Ti DCII TOP (tested at stock speed and overclocked to 1GHz/overvolted to 1.13V) |
| Memory | 2x2GB Crucial Ballistix Smart Tracer DDR3-1600 |
| Drives |
Kingston SSDNow V+ 100 64GB SSD Samsung 5.25" BD-ROM/DVDRW Drive |
| Accessories | Corsair Link |
| CPU Cooler | Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo with Cooler Master ThermalFusion 400 |
| Power Supply | SilverStone Strider Plus 750W 80 Plus Silver |
Each case is tested in a stock configuration and an overclocked configuration that generates substantially more heat (and thus may produce more noise). The system is powered on and left idle for fifteen minutes, the thermal and acoustic results recorded, and then stressed by running seven threads in Prime95 (in-place large FFTs) on the CPU and OC Scanner (maximum load) on the GPU. At the end of fiteen minutes, thermal and acoustic results are recorded. This is done for the stock settings and for the overclock, and if the enclosure has a fan controller, these tests are repeated for each setting. Ambient temperature is also measured after the fifteen idle minutes but before the stress test and used to calculate the final reported results.
Thank You!
Before moving on, we'd like to thank the following vendors for providing us with the hardware used in our testbed.
- Thank you to Puget Systems for providing us with the Intel Core i7-2700K.
- Thank you to Gigabyte for providing us with the GA-Z68MX-UD2H-B3 motherboard.
- Thank you to Crucial for providing us with the Ballistix Smart Tracer memory.
- Thank you to Corsair for providing us with the Corsair Link kit.
- Thank you to Cooler Master for providing us with the Hyper 212 Evo heatsink and fan unit.
- Thank you to Kingston for providing us with the SSDNow V+ 100 SSD.
- Thank you to CyberPower for providing us with the Samsung BD-ROM/DVD+/-RW drive.
- And thank you to SilverStone for providing us with the power supply.
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Bitmap - Tuesday, June 19, 2012 - link
I laughed my A55 offMadAd - Wednesday, June 20, 2012 - link
"We're at a juncture now where there are very few reasons to go with an ATX motherboard over a Micro-ATX board"Exactly!! PC form factors need a reboot if they are to survive the next 10 years onslaught of tablets. ITX is a fantastic format limited only by its 17x17 size allowing only a single expansion slot and 2 channels of ram - and that really makes sense when paired with a low profile card in a thin case ... as soon as we need some HDDs, or a larger graphic card, or a soundcard and a graphics card then theres a big void between that and the 4 slot uATX format, filled only by the defunct DTX format (that imo with only 2 slots really didnt give much more of an option to ITX.)
My ideal board would have 3 expansions, 2x16 and 1xPCI, 4 Ram Slots and 6 Satas in a size not much bigger than ITX however this is all moot since the biggest problem is elsewhere too, we still have a problem with things like PSUs, they need to be smaller, same with Optical RW drives, do we need more than a laptop slimline size for opticals?
The first CD i burned in the last century was in a 5.25" bay, while we cant do anything about the width of the disk certainly it could slimline allowing sideways mounting yet there are no standard mountings for slimline Optical drives in the ATX spec.
Apart from the wishful thinking I do believe its time to step down from these humongous tower cases. I am already planning my next build into a uATX but of course anandtech doesnt really cover uATX stuff now does it *grin*
rickcain2320 - Thursday, June 21, 2012 - link
I have the previous version of this case and it has a severe hot spot at the top. The addition of the exhaust fan at the top hopefully resolves this problem. They rotated the power supply so it blows in rather than out (I guess) which is good, because the old fan direction was right over the hard drives, bathing them in warm air from your GPU and CPU. I regularly kept my front panel off because of overheating.Makes me wonder if I do some minor surgery and flip my fans over, could I achieve something similar?
manythings - Tuesday, October 20, 2015 - link
I have read this several times and still didn't get the joke about the name of the unit. Is it about being "PC"? But every Lian Li case is a PC. Could the author explain the joke? Thanks