What Do You Think of Lian-Li's PC-B16 and PC-A61 Cases?
Lian-Li is looking for your feedback on its PC-B16 and PC-A61 enclosures.
Lian-Li has announced two new enclosures, though they are both remarkably similar. They'll be known as the PC-B16 and the PC-A61.
The cases will both feature the same internals. The PC-B16 will feature a normal front panel, while the PC-A61 will have a door in front of the front panel for extra sound dampening.
The internals of the cases allow for up to ATX size motherboards, full-size ATX power supplies, three optical drives, up to six 2.5”/3.5” drives (more when the optical drive cages are removed), as well as graphics cards up to 280 mm long with hard drives installed and 420 mm long cards when the required hard drive cages are removed.
One of the most notable features of the cases are the hard drive cages – they feature a wildly different design from what other manufacturers use. The cages are individually removable, allowing for all the drives that are in use to remain installed but still making for easy installation. It also allows the user to remove only the required drive cages to make room for longer graphics cards rather than removing the entire cage, or worse, having to deal with a non-removable cage.
Cooling is achieved by dual front 120 mm intakes, dual 140 mm top exhausts, and a single 120 mm rear exhaust.
In line with Lian-Li's recent efforts to be more connected to its customer base, it is taking feedback on its designs from you and me, so be sure to leave your comments below with any suggestions.
There was no word on pricing or a release date yet.
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Niels Broekhuijsen is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He reviews cases, water cooling and pc builds.
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vmem well, it's clean and looks nice. otherwise there's not much special about it. their cases are honestly starting to look more and more like caselabs builds though...Reply -
mouse24 It looks simple. Which is a good thing.Reply
Would have liked to see the 5.25 bays be optional, with perhaps the option of putting an extra 120mm fan (so you'd have a total of 3) WITHOUT ruining the aesthetic.
Maybe with a swappable front bezzel that you can buy that doesn't have the open spaces (even if they are filled with blanks it still looks bad IMO) I don't think 99% of people are gonna use more than one 5.25 bay. (perhaps a fan control + optical drive but thats really about it)
Also would like to see a metal plate for the top fan slots so I can get a good positive pressure build going without having to find fans that like to be place horizontally without dieing.
Maybe a side window addon? Perhaps? Tall order but if it had all those things I'd buy one. -
kyee7k Why not 12/13 inches allowable for the really (instead of the usual 10.5-11 inches) extravagant graphics cards and more space between the top grill and the top of the MB for use with push/pull AIO closed water coolers like H100i? Otherwise, I really like the design (I have the Lancool K7B).Reply -
doomtomb Lian Li really can't innovate anymore. Two versions: a version with a door and sound dampening and one for airflow. Good god, that's like every other case manufacturer on the market.Reply -
ohyouknow Take a page from NZXT. Power supply cover, modular 5.25 or non-existent. I'd like to see statistics of how many people have more than one ODD.Reply -
XGrabMyY Lian Li, ditch the classic motherboard layout. Cards are too dang heavy for that, even a backplate won't keep the PCIe from shorting when a giant GPU is slotted. Instead turn the board mounting 90 degrees, so the cards hang vertically. Design around that concept.Stand out, and take the market by storm.Reply -
bandrei why so many 5.25'' ? who is needing these days 3 dvd/cd/bd? also why having in a case only the standard hdd places , what if i want only one SSD , or 2 why not have more space posible?Reply