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• rarson - Monday, October 01, 2012 - link

  You can also use the bays for other things, like storage drawers, fan controls, audio breakouts, etc. Reply

• 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. Reply

• 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? Reply

• Sabresiberian - Monday, October 01, 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.
  
  ;) Reply

• 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. Reply

• theSeb - Monday, October 01, 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" Reply

• 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. Reply

• wwwcd - Sunday, September 30, 2012 - link

  This BIG case assembled with micro motherboard...PC case who was making for E-ATX...This is fun! Reply

• ZoSo - Sunday, September 30, 2012 - link

  I love Lian Li cases. Never had any issues with them and the build quality is great. Any system I built with them ran exceptionally cool with proper wire management. I've tried a lot of other all aluminum cases and once I bought my first Lian Li, it was then I realized I wasted my money on those other cases, and the extra money for Lian Li is well worth it. I also recommend them if someone wants a system built by me. I plan on getting the PC-A76X or the PC-A75X, still undecided, and fill it with HDDs using the optional backplanes. If the PC-A76X is built like the PC-X2000, which I'm currently using for my main system for the past 2 years, then it is a very good case.
  And by the way, Lian Li anodizes there cases, they don't paint. Reply

• etamin - Sunday, September 30, 2012 - link

  I've owned the original PC-A71F (before the USB 3.0 version) for over 2 years and thought that the A76X was the perfect successor to it when I first glossed the photos. I like that the interior has been blacked out and that there are only two 5.25" bays (perfect for 1 optical, 1 card reader). But then I realized all the misses...
  
  Despite the A76X being taller than the A71F, the two seem to share the same front panel door design which can be quite problematic. After about a year of use, my door hinge began rattling intermittently (good call on the long term durability of cheaper materials, Dustin). Also, the fan filters are especially hard to remove and clean as the entire front fascia is held on by 7 screws. Dustin, you mentioned in the review that the A76X has no fan filters in the front, but can you try removing the front fascia to see if there are any underneath?...it may be the same design as the A71F.
  
  Another downgrade on the A76X for me is the case feet. The shiny discs that many of the larger older Lian Li's sat on seem to have been replaced by small, black rubber feet. And as this case seems to be the first Lian Li to offer rubber cable openings, I'm not really sold on their functionality vs. what Corsair and Fractal have come up with. Lastly, the extra height of the case makes cabling especially ugly from the PSU to the external bays, even more so than the Tyr PC-X2000 as the A76X is longer.
  
  I wish Lian Li can just shrink the A71F a tad shorter, black out the interior, and leave 2 exertnal bays...that would make my day. The B-10 comes close, but a bit too small for me. Reply