Lian Li PC-A79 Aluminum Chassis Review




/ 10 years ago

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Introduction


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Lian Li are legends in the PC chassis industry, not only are they famed for their high precession construction and relentless use of aluminium, but also for their huge range of products that support the more extreme end of the PC industry. While sure they make a few mITX cases, as well as some crazy and fun specialist cases, their real speciality are the big chassis suitable for workstations, rendering rigs and extreme performance computing in general.

The chassis we are taking a look at today is undoubtedly aimed at the more extreme end of the market and while many may interpret that as “ultimate gaming rig”, that is only one definition of extreme. This chassis is built to take anything from an mATX motherboard to a dual socket workstation board, huge amounts of storage, lots of expansion cards, lots of fans and just a lot of high-end components in general.

At £299 it isn’t exactly cheap but as you can see from the specifications below you do get some pretty impressive compatibility, not to mention the fact that the huge chassis is made of high quality, light weight aluminium. This maybe a retail product, but it is far from consumer grade tech, and it’s not even close to the sort of prices you would expect to pay for your usual high-end chassis product.

Specifications:

  • Full tower chassis
  • (W) 230mm
  • (H) 618mm
  • (D) 596mm
  • Front bezel Material Aluminum
  • Side Panel Aluminum
  • Body Material Aluminum
  • Net Weight 9.9 kg
  • 5.25″ drive bay (External) 12
  • 3.5″ drive bay (External) None
  • 3.5″ HDD x9
  • 2.5″ HDD x8
  • Expansion Slot 11
  • Motherboard HPTX
  • E-ATX
  • XL-ATX
  • ATX
  • Micro-ATX
  • System Fan (Front) 120mm Fan x3
  • System Fan (Rear) 120mm Fan x1
  • System Fan (Top) 120mm Fan x2 (Optional)
  • or 140mm Fan x2 (Optional)
  • System Fan (Side) 120mm Fan x2
  • I/O Ports USB3.0 x 4
  • e-SATA x1
  • HD Audio
  • Maximum Compatibility VGA Card length: 350mm
  • PSU length: 350mm
  • CPU cooler height: 165mm
  • ATX PSU (Optional)
  • Gross Weight 12kg

The packaging features a clear image of the chassis as well as some smaller pictures that detail the finer features, these include USB 3.0 support, slide out HDD mounts and air filters.

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In the box I found a stack of screw on hard drive handles, a multi-language installation guide, a USB 3.0 to 2.0 converter, a huge amount of high quality screws, including motherboard thumbscrews, rubber mounting washers and a handy plastic container to store any extra screws. There is enough fittings here to fully install a dual socket motherboard a full compliment of storage and add-in cards.

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Exterior


As we said before, this chassis features aluminium panels, all of which are finished in a sleek brushed black on the exterior. There are two vertically arranged fan vents on the side, each of which is pre-fitted with a high quality 120mm fan. This huge panel is held in place by three thumb screws on the back of the chassis.

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The right side panel is also held in place by three thumb screws, but is otherwise just a plain panel.

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The front panel features 12 removable 5.25″ bay covers, all of which are well ventilated and are made from aluminium.

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Around the back we see a shiny aluminium finish, a 120mm exhaust fan that also features break-off cut-outs to make the mounting compatible with external water coolers.

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The fan features a nice fan guard on the rear and to the left we have the motherboard I/O cut-out. There are two thumb screws just above the fan and the motherboard I/O and a further three at the bottom of the chassis, these are for releasing the slide out motherboard tray which we will take a look at shortly.

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Here we see that there are 11 ventilated expansion slots, each covered with a high quality and reusable cover. To the right we have four cut-outs used for cable routing or water cooling.

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The top panel features a large ventilation panel with a slide lock mechanism, when unlocked the back of the panel pops up to allow for easy removal.

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Behind the mesh there is a simple mesh cover that can be easily lifted out for cleaning.

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Below the mesh we find a pair of fan mounts which support 2 x 120mm, 2 x 140mm fans or an (up to) 240mm radiator.

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The front I/O panel features a slide back protector on the left and a pair of switches for power and reset on the right.

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Behind the cover we find eSATA, four USB 3.0 ports and HD audio connections.

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The chassis is huge, so users will be pleased to see two wheels at the back that will help with slotting the system into place when fully loaded. The front features two heavy duty metal stands and overall the chassis feels stable even when light and empty.

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The PSU air intake is filtered and the filter can be slid out sideways with relative ease for quick maintenance.

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Interior


The interior of the chassis is a mixture of the black finished aluminium of the outer frame and side panels, and the contrasting shiny surfaces of the brushed aluminium. there is a huge CPU cooler cut-out for easy mounting, huge amounts of cable routing space and grommets. Most of the motherboard stand-offs are pre-installed, but extra ones are provided for wider workstation motherboards (mount holes can be seen between the two vertical columns of cable routing cut-outs).

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In the back we see that each of the expansion slots is fitted with a high quality thumb screw, there is also extensive clearance from the expansion slots to the left side panel, so wide cards should not be an issue. The PSU area is massive also, with  two metal rails with a rubber strip coating that not only helps keep it firmly in place, but will also help reduce vibration.

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In the front of the chassis we have four mounting bays, all of which are 5.25″ by default, but the bottom three also come fitted with 3 bay 3.5″ adaptor brackets, while the top and bottom of each of these three bays also has screw mounts for two 2.5″ drives. In this configuration you can hold 3 x 5.25″ drives, 9 x 3.5″ drives and 8 x 2.5″ drives in this chassis (if you count the extra two 2.5″ bays on the base of the chassis).

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The bays are highly modular, each of the three lower 3 x 5.25″ bays is fitted with a 3 x 3.5″ + 2 x 2.5″ bracket, this bracket can be removed via four thumb screws allowing you to install 3 x 5.25″ drives, all of which have a removable cover on the chassis front panel, meaning you can install a full compliment of optical drives, or similar devices if you wish.

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Here you can see the middle HDD adaptor bay is removed.

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Here we see the HDD tray that was removed, it is very sturdy in construction and nicely engineered. There is a dedicated 120mm fan at the front that will help cool your storage drives, but also brings air in front the front of the chassis for the rest of your system. All three of these storage bays feature their own 120mm fan.

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The fan can easily be removed via the front screws, you could swap them for your own choice of fan if you wish, but the ones included are pretty good quality.

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Still looking at those hard drive bays we see each has a single thumb screw at the front right side.

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Turn the screw to loosen it and it slides up allowing you to slide your drives into the bay. There are HDD mounting rails included in the box. You then slide it down, screw it tight and this securely locks your drive in place with relative ease.

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The side panel of the chassis features two 120mm intake fans, these are powered by a single 3pin connection on the chassis interior and the connection to the side panel is done by four contact pins in the bottom right hand corner. This means you don’t have to worry about attaching / detaching side panel cables when opening the chassis.

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Plenty of clearance in the top, should be enough for a slim radiator and set of fans. There is a wide strip of space that allows for cable routing above the motherboard and if you look to the top right there is separate cable routing that handles all the front I/O panel cables.

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Speaking of front I/O panel cables, all are finished in black, with only the HD audio showing any exposed cable colours. The four USB 3.0 ports are powered by dual native USB 3.0 headers, although Lian Li do provide you with a single USB 3.0 to 2.0 converter. The base of the chassis also features two 2.5″ drive bays.

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The rear of the chassis is just as packed with precision as the front. The left side we see 12 thumb screws that keep the three HDD bay adaptors in place, a full length vertical cable routing column for the front panel cables, all held neatly in place with plastic clips, and about half plenty of room for routing other cables.

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The A79 also has a bit of a party trick that I haven’t seen since the old Cooler Master cases, the whole motherboard tray slides right out and this can really make mounting some components, or indeed maintaining those components a whole lot easier.

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Of course if you really need to, you can remove the entire tray and work on it before bringing it back and installing it in the chassis again.

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The whole unit feels really sturdy and being able to install the motherboard, cooler, memory and even the expansion cards on a work bench is so much easier than climbing around in the chassis. The whole thing just slots right back into the case with ease when you are done, awesome!

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Here we see the interior of the left side panel. The bottom left features the contact points for hooking up the fan and a Y split cable that connects both fans to the system.

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And finally on the interior a closer look at those side panel contact points.

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Final Thoughts


Being such a big chassis I was expecting this build to be quite demanding, but it actually took me no longer than 20 minutes to get everything in place. The motherboard may not be the biggest this chassis can handle and the extensive cable management is capable of handing almost any motherboard size we throw at it.

Airflow is superb throughout the chassis and with three fans in the front and two fans on the left side panel pulling air in there is no doubt that our components will have plenty of fresh air, the use of BitFenix Alchemy cables keeps things looking clean and tidy too, complimenting the high contrasting black and silver look of the chassis interior.

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Hard drive installation was super easy too. Screw on the metal hard drive handle with some large screws and it slides into the precision cut locking rails we looked at earlier. Lian Li even sell a hot-swap adaptor bracket to make things even better, very handy if you plan on changes hard drives a lot. The SSD mounting was easy too, just four special screws with rubber washed and it pushed into the pre-cut mounting holes.

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Here we can see that I’ve mounted the Corsair H100i and it fits perfectly without conflicting with memory, or the optical bays.

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Water cooling is of course one option and you could easily fit some epic air coolers in here, more importantly you can fit two large CPU coolers should you choose to install a dual socket motherboard. Below that there is enough room for a huge array of expansion cards, this case is obviously capable of holding four dual socket graphics cards with ease.

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Side panels back in place the chassis looks absolutely immense, and despite its gargantuan size it somehow still manages to look and feel professional.

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Final Thoughts


Price

If you want to purchase the PC-A79 then you need to be ready to make a big investment, with online prices ranging from £250 – £300 it is far from budget friendly, but in terms of features and build quality I’m amazed that it only costs as much as it does, it feels like it should cost more.

However expensive, the price is relative to the component support, if you’re looking to add huge numbers of hard drives, a dual socket motherboard, several graphics cards and a huge PSU, then £300 on a chassis is likely to be one of the cheaper components of such a build.

Conclusion

If you’ve just sat and read this whole review I think it is pretty obvious that this chassis is nothing short of faultless. Every little detail of it has been precision crafted to perfection and the level of detail on the HDD adaptor brackets alone is proof of that. Lian Li have built a huge chassis for the extreme end of the PC market, but then they’ve gone in and added little touches and details, such as the rear wheels, that make working with and maintaining your high end build that much easier.

Six high quality fans have been included, more than enough to provide powerful airflow to a chassis of this size, regardless of what components you throw inside it. The use of a fan controller may not go a miss should you want to keep control of cooling performance vs noise, but chances are that noise is the least of your worries if you intend to saturate this chassis with components.

The highly modular storage bays are fantastic to work with, changing a hard drive is quick and easy and with room for 17 hard drives in total thanks to the 12 5.25″ bays and additional 2.5″ drive mount. Then we have room for 11 expansion cards, likely more than most people will ever need. HPTX motherboard support and room for some seriously huge air coolers thanks to the wide chassis design. The only limit is that I can’t get a radiator bigger than 240mm in the top, beyond that, every major component on the market today be compatible with this chassis.

Overall this is in many ways the best chassis I’ve ever worked with, but it is no going to be ideal for everyone, obviously. It looks like it belongs next to a desk at CERN rather than in my office, but if you are planning on building a quad-SLI, dual-zeon powered epic RAID array system, then look no further than the PC-A79.

Pros

  • Extensive component support
  • Legendary Lian-Li build quality
  • Six fans pre-installed
  • Modular 5.25″ storage bays
  • Radiator support
  • Cable management

Cons

  • None, it exceeded our expectation in all areas.

“Lian Li have set about creating one of the best HPTX chassis on the market and they’ve succeeded in style. This chassis can hold something akin to a compact super computer and still look neat and professional from the exterior. It may be expensive, but it looks, feels and performs so well that it feels like a great deal.”

Extreme-Performance

Lian Li PC-A79 Aluminum Chassis Review

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