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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Iketh - Saturday, June 16, 2012 - link
I already have 3 HDDs installed, why do I need the cage?Iketh - Saturday, June 16, 2012 - link
BTW, that's a passively cooled 2600k @ 4.3GHz at 79C with prime load WITH THE DOORS OFFhowever, evo + 2600k is lapped
Olaf van der Spek - Saturday, June 16, 2012 - link
Passive? As in no fans at all?Without the cage the case looks good.
wifiwolf - Sunday, June 17, 2012 - link
Doesn't seem right to passively cool the cpu and have fan in the front and back.The noise will still be there, having a low noise cpu fan there wouldn't add any noticeable noise
Iketh - Sunday, June 17, 2012 - link
then i guess when i tested the noise levels with and without and found a very noticeable improvement, i must be absolutely incompetent to make the judgement... thank you for showing me the path wifiwolfdoctormonroe - Saturday, June 16, 2012 - link
PC-X500/PC-X500FX in the mATX formfactor would be brilliant, hopefully it would be cheaper as well...etamin - Saturday, June 16, 2012 - link
I've been wondering why Lian Li (or any other company) hasn't employed the 90 degree rotated design that Silverstone uses. Is it under patent protection?InterClaw - Saturday, June 16, 2012 - link
It seems like a major mistake to not let the PSU get its own air from the front, especially since it dumps its hot air at the bottom of the case. The way it is now it just recycles its own hot air. Genius... This is beside all the other cooling problems what with the GFX blocking the flow.Dustin, I'm curious though why you mounted the CPU cooler horizontally and not vertically to help the airflow along. Was it not possible or is that deviating from the testing methodology since the heat sink might perform differently after being reseated?
RanDum72 - Saturday, June 16, 2012 - link
I cannot believe that the case designers never thought about where the PSU exhaust is going to come out. The heat generated by the PSU is dumped inside the case. They could have drilled some holes that aligns with the PSU exhaust but even that will also be picked up by the bottom fan and thrown back into the case. All form, no function.kesbar - Saturday, June 16, 2012 - link
after looking at the thermal results, the PC-A55 has carpet burn.