Lian Li PC-A76X Case Review: The Limits of Aluminum
by Dustin Sklavos on September 30, 2012 12:01 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- Lian Li
- HPTX
- E-ATX
Conclusion: If All You Need is Performance...
While the Lian Li PC-A76X's cooling design wasn't quite the homerun I was looking for, it was pretty close. Looking at the graphs doesn't really tell the whole story; Lian Li's design is competitive thermally without sacrificing noise for performance. That's the kind of balance we want to see in this price bracket, and the fact that it performs as well as it does without any kind of noise-cancelling material or padding in the panels is a testament both to the smart engineering that went into the PC-A76X's cooling design and to the fact that it's not how many fans you have or how fast they run, it's where you place them and how you engineer the airflow. If you want performance, you've got it, full stop.
Unfortunately performance isn't really the whole story. If that's all you care about and you need a large case, then the PC-A76X is going to be one of the best options available for you. But I have reservations about the build quality, the lack of conveniences, and most importantly, the price tag. However well it performs, it's plain to me that Lian Li is overcharging for the PC-A76X and its slightly less expensive sibling, the PC-A75X. The aluminum used to build the case continues to be fairly chintzy and thin, and I'm not sure it even has to be. This case is not designed to take any kind of abuse; aluminum finishes can be prone to scratching, and aluminum this thin is fairly easy to dent and warp.
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The case may also be quiet now, but it sure doesn't feel sturdy, and when a case isn't sturdy there's a good chance it's going to develop acoustic problems later on. I wouldn't be surprised to see it develop a rattle in the long term, and that's before acknowledging the lack of filters on any of the fans. No filters may improve airflow, but the PC-A76X might wind up being difficult to keep clean in the long term even without considering how easy the finish will be to scuff.
My bottom line is this: when a case costs $210, it needs to be well made. Period. It needs to be fairly easy to build in and failing that, it needs to at least justify the difficulty. The PC-A76X only justifies itself in its performance, performance that I'm not entirely convinced makes up for the lack of conveniences. More than that, I'm skeptical as to just how well it can serve its intended purpose as an E-ATX/HPTX enclosure as the severe lack of cable routing holes in the motherboard tray could very well cause the interior to start clogging up with cabling in a hurry.
There's a very good case waiting to be discovered in the PC-A76X, but this design is in dire need of refinement and Lian Li needs to both get with the times and justify the exorbitant price they're asking for this case. It's not the disaster that Cubitek's HPTX ICE was, where Cubitek wanted $359 for a case that couldn't perform anywhere near as well as cases half its price, but it's a lot of money for a case that's missing the features and polish competing cases have. If all you're concerned about is performance, the PC-A76X is probably going to fine in the short and medium term, but if you want to get the most for your money, this isn't it.
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Grok42 - Sunday, September 30, 2012 - link
Why even have a single external bay, just get rid of them entirely. Surely there are enough people that don't have a need for any external drives that there could be a few of these types of cases on the market? I will say I'm impressed that Lian-Li *only* put two external bays in a case this large. Despite my opinion that none were needed, this is a huge step forward from silly cases with 5-9 external bays.I get your point that a huge portion of the builds don't need more than a few drives, but I think that unlike the external bay issue, the internal bays could be engineered in such a way that they are flexible and have no trade offs. It seems that a rail system could be conceived that did the job of supporting the structural needs of the case while not blocking air flow at all. Of course, as you add drives, they would block the flow of air but that is a choice you could make. My other big beef with almost all internal bay systems is that spacing the drives is always a trade-off between cabling requirements and heat. With SSDs becoming more popular the 3.5" Vs 2.5" bays is also getting to be a problem. It seems the internal drive rails could be made in such a way that you could decide on the spacing and not need to be locked into set distances based on how many and what type of drives you have.
Wardrop - Sunday, September 30, 2012 - link
I agree that the need for optical drives is on the decline. Very rarely do I, or anyone else in my house for that matter, need to read or write to an optical disc.Where I disagree is with cases with heaps of 5.25" bays. There's a market for them; especially for cases with ONLY 5.25" drive bays. I bought a Lian Li PC-A17B about 2 years ago - I had to shop around to find one as they had been discontinued (I bought one of the last available in Australia). The idea was to buy a bunch of Lian Li 3x 5.25" to 4x 3.5" hot-swap cages, which is exactly what I did. I've now got 3 optical drives and 8 hot-swap drives in the size of a standard ATX case. I could if I needed to, scrap the optical drives and go with another hard-drive cage for 12 hot-swap hard-drives in a standard ATX case. Not only does this function really well, it also looks great as the Lian Li drive bays look like they came with the case as they have the same finish and styling. Each drive cage also has a 120mm fan, so thermal performance isn't completely ruined either.
I just wish Lian Li didn't discontinue this line of cases, as by having this case, they could essentially save themselves from having to make about 5 additional cases to account for all the combinations that could be achieved with the PC-A17.
Modular case design. Just my two cents.
Grok42 - Sunday, September 30, 2012 - link
Certainly a valid use case and I'm glad they still make cases like this for your needs. However, there seem to be way too many of them given how niche this market would seem to be. There are also a lot of cases with internal hot swap bays which would be almost as good with the exception that you would have to have easy access to one side of the case in order to actually hot swap a drive. Given how uncommon it is to hot swap this typically wouldn't be a problem.Another way to build this would be to use an external drive enclosure. I get why this would be less than ideal for a lot of people but it has the advantage of being simple and robust.
Maybe the answer is stackable case sections each with their own cooling fan.
rarson - Monday, October 1, 2012 - link
You can also use the bays for other things, like storage drawers, fan controls, audio breakouts, etc.JonnyDough - Sunday, September 30, 2012 - link
You know, I live in a tiny 1 bedroom apt and I've come to realize that my monster sized Thermaltake Kandalf is probably the best PC purchase I've made. The reason I state this is because smaller is not necessarily better. My PC case keeps my computer relatively quiet, and it was built to house water cooling as well. It was easier to build in than some of my smaller cases. Granted, a removable motherboard try and specifically designed parts (such as a slimmer CPU cooler) make building in smaller cases much easier. It's a beast, for sure - but I don't mind. It garners attention. It's kind of like having a big truck. It's a man's machine.futurepastnow - Sunday, September 30, 2012 - link
I know that's your standard testbed and you want to use it for the sake of comparison charts, but I can't help but think you should have thrown a dual-socket EATX system in there for a real heat and noise test. How loud is this case when it is used the way it is meant to be used?Sabresiberian - Monday, October 1, 2012 - link
I agree. Some of these cases should be tested more strenuously to see if they really do keep up with cooling demands. That being said, I give Dustin credit for bringing some significant heat challenge in his methodology, much better than a lot of case reviews I've seen.;)
vgray35@hotmail.com - Sunday, September 30, 2012 - link
You do not mention the type of aluminum employed in this case - is it pure aluminum or aluminum alloy? Aluminum tensile, bending and compression strength is comparable with steel with the right choice of material, so a flimsy case simply amounts to bad design and choice of aluminum alloy.Lots of steel cases are flimsy - just bad design. So too this aluminum case is simply one with bad choice in material thickness and/or material alloy.
Aluminum may also be hardened to make the surface durable. Again bad choices and design for the material.
theSeb - Monday, October 1, 2012 - link
" is it pure aluminum or aluminum alloy? Aluminum tensile, bending and compression strength is comparable with steel with the right choice of material, so a flimsy case simply amounts to bad design and choice of aluminum alloy."I can tell you without looking at the case that it will be an aluminium alloy. Basically all "aluminium" consumer goods are made out of some aluminium alloy and not "pure aluminium" so your question does not make sense, even though the second bit about the choice of aluminium alloy is correct.
Pure aluminium is soft and very malleable.
"The yield strength of pure aluminium is 7–11 MPa, while aluminium alloys have yield strengths ranging from 200 MPa to 600 MPa"
Magichands8 - Sunday, September 30, 2012 - link
Lately every time I look at most of Lian Li's offerings I'm seeing lots of weird design decisions. I just don't understand the standard layout of most cases in which you have a thick drive tower positioned right behind the front intake fans. The components that need air flow the least get the best cooling. At the same time air flowing over the drives at the front is heated before it reaches the components that need to be cooled the most. I guess it's a throwback to a time when standard hard drives produced far more heat and storage capacity was much, much lower requiring many drives to satisfy the needs of power users. But those times are long gone. Lian Li really seemed to hit the mark with their PC-X2000 series. I am very impressed the by their straight-through air flow but the rest of their line-up seems to be deviating from that paradigm for reasons that scape me. Although it's really interesting to hear from an above poster who said that the front cover restricts air-flow. It wouldn't surprise me if that also contributed raising the noise floor of the system as well.Take the drive cage away from the front of the case. You should be able to easily fit at least 5 drives, very compactly, either above or below the motherboard. Especially if some of them are going to be SSDs (and they should be anyway). In fact I remember reading once that cooling drives TOO efficiently can actually cause them to fail SOONER. Plus, anyone who needs to fill on the order of 10+ drive bays is someone who is looking to use, what, 20+ TERABYTES of storage space? Anyone needing that much storage space is going to be much better served by a storage scheme that's flexible and expandable i.e. an external NAS or SAN setup. No matter how you cut it it just doesn't make any sense to allocate huge amounts of case space to large numbers of drives.
I hear a lot in comments about Fractal Design and I like their cases but they can't get it right either. Every one of their cases seems to be designed for negative pressure cooling. That's the deal breaker for me on their cases. Even Lian Li is doing this with some of their NEWER designs. Negative pressure cooling is great and all if you want your case to double as vacuum cleaner but to me that's never made any sense.
What I take away from all of the various case reviews I see is that all these case manufacturers either have no idea what their customers are using their cases to do or are simply not paying attention what qualifies as a good case.