Lian Li PC-A77F Review

👤by David Mitchelson Comments 📅31-08-10
Externals

There is nothing unusual about the packaging with the PC-A77F. It comes in a typical chassis box - a series of vertical icons are printed on the box listing the features, giving you a good idea of what's ahead. The PC-A77F does offer some intriguing and innovative features over the already popular PC-A77. Aside from this, the case is well packaged inside the box.



Bundled with the PC-A77F are a selection of accessories that will combine or work hand-in-hand with the features found on the case. There are an abundance of different sized screws - for the hard drive, thumbscrews for motherboard mounting and many others. All these screws can be placed into a clear tub that has areas section off to simply organise screws that can be so easily lost. A nice idea, I like this. There are mounting rods for VGA retention (something we will be looking at in more depth later). A large patented PSU bracket - used to mount the PSU with or without screws and lastly a aluminium plate with perforated screw holes in it.



The Lian Li stands tall at 590mm. With a case of such size you would expect this to be heavy but remember, this is not a steel chassis its made from aluminium that not only has positive strength attributes but is light-weight so at just 9.2KG - for a full tower case this is noticeably light. A steel full-tower case would typically weigh around 15KG+. The PC-A77F is available in 3 different colours - black, silver or red. The case we are looking at today is the silver version and it has a hair-line brushed anodized finish. On first impressions it would seem to be quite a rigid, sharp looking case but all sharp edges have been taken care of. The side panels are plain in appearance so each side does not differ at all.



Moving to the front panel there is now a small door panel, opening this reveals an eSATA port, 4xUSB 3.0 ports, microphone socket and a headphone socket. To the side of this we have the power/reset buttons. It's good to see USB 3.0 featuring on this case, in recent times we've seen manufacturers featuring (in some cases) just 1 USB 3.0 port and the rest USB 2.0. It makes complete sense to endorse such a new technology because after all it is backwards compatible so its better to have it than to be without it.



With a view of the rear of the case, this follows a standard case layout although at the top there are ventilation slots - behind this, inside the case is more than enough room for the installation of reservoirs and other kit for customising the cooling on your system. This case has bags of space, so you needn't worry about it being tight. Moving down the rear side there is a 120mm LED fan that acts as an exhaust to the CPU cooler/system. Beneath this are two rubber grommets that again can support your water-cooling needs. Next is the PCI expansion slot covers, when we move inside we will be taking a closer look at the patented mechanism Lian Li have incorporated here. Then, lastly an opening at the bottom for the PSU to be mounted.



On the top side of the PC-A77F there are two mesh outlets for a further two 140mm LED fans. The cut-out's here are very neat - an accurate and tidy job.



With regards to the feet on the PC-A77F there are 4 highly polished aluminium holders. Underneath the feet are rubber pads to prevent sliding on smooth surfaces.




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