Lian Li Lancool 216 Airflow Focus Case Review

Interior

With the glass removed, it’s easy to get in and install your hardware. The glass has a 1″ white border to hide the frame, and there’s a soft foam strip on the interior of the glass to ensure a clean fit.

The interior of the case is stunning, with a huge amount of space to work with, and as you can see, there are loads of cable routing options dotted throughout the case too.

There are two large grommets in grey, which looks cool with the contrast, but given how white everything else is, may be they would have been better white? Subjective I know, it does look neat though.

There are two removable ventilated panels on the PSU shroud, allowing for various cooling hardware to be installed here. There are also mounts for two 2.5″ drives, as well as the cable routing holes at the back.

There’s a large cut-away towards the front of the shroud, so you can use the full height of the case for front-mounted cooling/radiators.

In the front of the case, you’ll find these two stunning 1600 PWM ARGB fans, which will provide a huge wall of cool air throughout your build.

There’s an additional (non-RGB) 140mm PWM fan in the rear too. The front fans operate at 500-1600 RPM with the rear operating at 200-1800 RPM.

While the front of the case can handle up to a 280 or 360mm radiator, the bottom a 240mm, and the rear a 140mm, the top of the case will also support up to a 360mm slim radiator, so you’re unlikely to be left wanting in the cooling department.

The top panel of the case is removable, allowing you easy access to the fan mounts, and there are three spacing options too, so you can avoid conflicts with motherboard VRMs and other components.

The whole top section of the case is removable too, so you can install fans and radiators externally, then drop them all back in as a single unit.

The front panel cover can be pulled away with a firm tug, allowing you access to those two spectacular fans, which come with huge shrouds to ensure higher air pressure; it stops air from getting around the fans.

Behind the motherboard, there’s a vast amount of cable tidy space, so you should be able to be pretty lazy with routing cables.

There’s a plate here behind the motherboard, but I couldn’t see in the documentation what it was for… answers on a postcard, please.

Below that, there are two SSD mounting brackets, both made from surprisingly robust metal plates too, but actually, all of this case is very robust as you might expect from Lian Li.

There are cable tie points, Velcro straps and even these springy plastic retention things in the corners, so keeping unruly cables in check should be a breeze.

What’s this? Well, it’s a 3.5″ and 2.5″ modular and, removable and movable HDD cage, which is great. But it’s uhm, black. Now I wouldn’t mind, but in a white case, this sticks out. “But Peter, it’s under the PSU shroud!” I hear you cry, but with mesh on the PSU shroud, the front mesh going to the bottom, and mesh on the top of the shroud, it is visible… a bit, splitting hairs here, but come on, little details add up.

There’s a fan and ARGB hub at the top of the case too, but unfortunately, it doesn’t have a built-in controller, which is a shame, as I like built-in controllers, so I don’t have to use desktop software. That and the gigabyte board I am using is a bit old and… incompatible, as the converter pins are also broken (that’s on me, I’ll get a new modern board ASAP).