Lian Li Lancool 216 Airflow Focus Case Review
Peter Donnell / 1 year ago
How Much Does it Cost?
The Lian Li Lancool 216 comes in three variants, and the price does vary for each, the RGB versions are more expensive, of course, but which one is right for you? I can’t really say. Personally, I’d get the black non-RGB, it’s a good price, and I tend to use aftermarket fans and cooling anyway. The prices are on-par with the equally good competition, such as the Corsair 4000X, NZXT H5 Flow, Fractal Pop Air and a few others.
- Lian Li Lancool 216 White RGB – £114.95
- Lian Li Lancool 216 Black RGB – £109.99
- Lian Li Lancool 216 Black – £89.99
Overview
The latest case from Lian Li is ticking all the right boxes for me. It’s a good size, so it’ll easily handle an E-ATX motherboard but still retains a modest mid-tower form factor. It’ll house an RTX 4090 (perhaps not some of the most extreme and large versions though, measure before you order), and even supports vertical mounting if you remember to order a riser cable too.
There’s plenty of room for cable routing, with a huge rear section, and a full-size PSU shroud doing all the heavy lifting, and allowing you to cram cables out of sight with ease. However, with so many Velcro straps, cable ties and retention clips, you can do it very neatly with relative ease.
There are no traditional dust filters on the front and top, instead using a fine mesh built into the removable panel. It’s more than up to the job though, and you simply hoover it out once in a while. There’s a mesh on the side of the PSU shroud too, which again you can just hoover our or clean with compressed air. Then a large PSU dust filter which can be slid out for easy cleaning.
There are three pre-installed fans, and unlike many cases where you don’t get enough or they’re sub-par fans, there are 160mm high-airflow monsters, that pull in impressive amounts of air and remain quiet. The rear 140mm fan is great too, and overall, the case can maintain a positive air pressure, despite its heavily meshed and ventilated design.
Overall, it’s a stunning case. The only quirks I have with it are that there’s no vertical cut-out in the PSU shroud for GPU power cables, and for some reason, the HDD cage is black, despite so much attention going towards making all other fittings white or silver. I’d have liked a built-in ARGB controller on the hub too, but certainly, none of these things are deal breakers for an otherwise excellent PC case.
Stunning aesthetics, unrelenting focus on high-airflow and low-noise cooling, and a great case to show off your lovely new hardware. The only thing that’s really tricky to navigate is that at this price, the Lian Li 216 has some extremely strong competition from the likes of Corsair, Thermaltake, NZXT, Cooler Master and many others, who are all putting up a strong game in the approximately £100 market right now.