Lian Li is no stranger to our roundup of the best mid-tower cases, and depending on how you feel about the aesthetic, the company's new Lancool II (stylized as LANCOOL II) might be a contender as well.
To be clear, I have not spent any hands on time with the Lancool II. I'm also undecided in how I feel about the front design. Part of me thinks it looks like some of the fugly gamer cases of old, and part of me thinks it's fine, adding a bit of flair without going too far over the top.
That aside, there are some interesting features here for the money. There are two versions, a black model for $89.99 and a white model for $94.99.
Case makers have gotten better about cramming more bells and whistles into sub-$100 enclosures, and in this instance, Lian Li opted for tempered glass side panels. What's somewhat unique about the implementation here is that they flip open, sort of like a car door (minus the handle).
Even more unique are the flip-open covers on the bottom chamber, on both sides of the case. This gives quick and easy access to the hard drive bays and power supply. Normally, you would need to rip off an entire side panel to access those things.
Lian Li also includes a few cable management covers to tidy up right side of the PC. Since there's a tempered glass panel on that side as well, hastily plopping excess cabling behind the motherboard tray would get exposed. But with the included covers, it looks like you could still get away with doing that, and then hiding the mess underneath square and rectangular covers.
- Motherboard support—E-ATX/ATX (width: under 280mm), m-ATX/ITX
- PSU length—up to 210mm
- GPU length—up to 384mm
- CPU clearance—up to 176mm
- Drive bays—4x 2.5-inch SSD + 3x 3.5-inch/2.5-inch HDD/SSD
- I/O ports—2x LED control buttons, 1x audio, 2x USB 3.0, 1x USB 3.1 Type-C
- Dust filters—1x top, 1x front panel, 1x bottom
- Included fans—3x 120mm (front, top, rear)
- Dimensions—478 (D) x 229 (W) x 494 (H) mm
For cooling, the case supports up to three 120mm or two 140mm fans in the front, two 120mm fans above the PSU chamber, two 120mm/140mm fans up top, and one 120mm fan in the rear. Alternatively, builders can install up to a 360mm radiator in the front and/or a 120mm radiator in the rear, if going the liquid cooling route.
There appears to be a lot of flexibility here. In addition to the rear cable management amenities, there are multiple different locations to install storage drives. Builders can also purchase separately a kit for installing a graphics card vertically, though it's not clear how much that costs.
Both the black and white models are available to preorder on Newegg. Since they won't ship until mid-December, though, you might be better served waiting to see what of Black Friday deals emerge on cases next week, if you're in the market for one.
