Lian Li PC-A79 Aluminum Chassis Review

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).

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.

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).

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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