Upside-Down And Backwards, Lian Li’s PC-O12 Design Allows For Dual Vertically Mounted GPUs

Lian Li announced its new PC-O12 compact mid-tower chassis, not to be confused with the PC-O11 WGX we looked at here or the PC-O11 WGX RoG announced here. This dual-chambered case features a steel frame with tempered glass and aluminum panels and a unique GPU mounting system.

The press release seems to put an emphasis on the "benefits" of tempered glass:  

The PC-O12’s flawless tempered glass front and side panels make it a sleek and sophisticated showcase for the latest cutting edge computing technologies. Tempered glass is tough, safe and very durable, providing a ‘fresh from the showroom’ appearance indefinitely. The PC-O12’s alluring black aluminum outer body and panels complete the picture. Internally, a rigid steel frame provides a firm foundation for state of the art features.

In addition to the PC-O12 being a dual-chamber case, it also features an inverted, reversed design. This means the primary compartment for your main system components is on the opposite side of the motherboard tray, facing the right hand side of the case. The inverted design positions the CPU socket area at the bottom of the case with support for coolers up to 75mm. There is no support for graphics cards on this side of the case.

With that said, you will find mounting locations for two vertically positioned graphics cards on the left hand side of the chassis that connect to the motherboard via the included PCI-E riser cable. Although the PC-O12 is designed for multi-GPU use, Nvidia graphics card owners will be unable to take advantage of SLI due to the lack of a flexible bridge connector long enough to span the distance between both video cards. Radeon owners are unaffected by this issue because the connection between graphics cards is made through the PCI-Express bus without the need for an external bridge connector.

The PC-O12 measures 508 x 203 x 550mm (HxWxD) and weighs in at 8.6kg. This chassis has mounting locations for 4x 3.5” and 4x 2.5” drives, graphics cards up to 340mm,  PSUs up to 230mm in length, CPU coolers as tall as 75mm, and support for up to E-ATX motherboards. There are no expansion slot openings in the rear of this chassis aside from the GPU mounting locations.

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Although the PC-012 supports up to five 120mm fans and two 140mm fans, the company does not include any fans with the chassis. The top and bottom panels also include magnetic mesh dust filters. A 240mm radiator or all-in-one cooler can be mounted in both the front and top of the case.

The PC-O12 is available now for $400.