Maybe there are people out there who think they need this, but those who actually do have to be pretty rare.
There are a few benefits, though: First, since it’s so short, the steel section can be opened even in confined spaces to allow access to the hot-swap HDD bays under the PSU shroud. Sometimes, our 3DMark stress testing shows different results than the torture testing thanks to the limited heat generated by the CPU, and this is one of those instances. 0.8mm SGCC (Exterior, MB tray, and most of the interior), Front (multi-way fan/radiator bracket): 3 X 120mm or 2 X 140mm, Front (multi-way fan/radiator bracket): 1 X 360/280/240mm, Behind the Right-side Shroud Panel: 2 X 2.5″ SSD, 1 x Top (magnetic), 1 x Front Panel (magnetic), 1 x Bottom (tray). With the case fans set to 100% speed and reportedly running around 1400RPM, case noise hit 42.8 dBA. This scored the worst result of all, at 63.6 degrees over ambient. The hinges on the steel section are screwed into place and therefore not as easy to remove. The Lancool II averaged 53 degrees CPU dT with these fans, about 3 degrees better than the stock test.
There’s no really great way to get a bunch of cool air to the GPU with just the stock fans. As long as the fans are kept back from the front panel, ventilation does exist and could be brute forced with the purchase of some additional fans--but be warned, it’ll be noisy. There’s also no way to open the top set of glass doors without opening another panel: there are no handles except on the steel doors, and the glass edges are all nested behind other parts of the case. The Lian Li Lancool II is another budget case effort from Lian Li--budget relative to the rest of Lian Li’s past cases, at least. Testing is completely automated using in-house scripting, and executes with perfect accuracy on every run. The best possible no-front-panel temperature was 48.6 degrees dT, almost exactly mirroring the CPU deltas for these tests. Clearly Lian Li has had to fight tooth and nail to hit that $90 price point if they’re charging $5 extra for white paint (painting the case white is legitimately more difficult).
We’d like to have seen that optional modularity added, as we couldn’t identify a reason that it would be impossible once that extra hole is added. 3DMark Firestrike Extreme’s stress test is GPU-intensive and realistic to a gaming workload, and our test GPU averaged 53 degrees Celsius over ambient under this workload.
The hard drive sleds are another weak point.
We gather from the manual that this is supposed to provide a mounting location for sticking on third-party RGB or fan hubs, which is a thoughtful touch considering that Lian Li doesn’t use that mount for their own RGB controller.
We’ll first look at a noise-only chart. 55 degrees is a bit warmer than the original H500P, which was terrible in most ways thermals, and equal to the stock Meshify C (the Meshify C requires some additional fans to perform really well). Since the fan tray can be moved around, we also tried pushing it forward a little to get the fans even more flush with the mesh filters. We appreciate good built-in RGB controls, even if these buttons are very obviously replacing what were two additional USB ports. One example use case would be that you’ve configured a RAID5 set of three hard drives in your $90 case and that you also had a drive fail within the life of the system, and that you also needed to keep the system online while swapping-in the replacement drive for a RAID rebuild. Again, there’s only one intake fan being affected by the removal of the front panel, and it’s doing the job of both CPU and GPU intake. Thermal benchmarking is conducted for 1400 seconds (23 minutes), a period we've determined sufficient for achieving equilibrium. There’s also a mysterious third cover over the back of the CPU socket.
Like the CPU thermals, 55C is still on the warm side, and we had a hard time improving significantly over that average without additional fans. It’s the successor to the identically MSRP-ed $90 Lancool One, a case that we were mildly pleased with at the time but lacked the wow factor of Lian Li’s O11 line. Moving the three fans up to be flush with the front filter raised temperatures further to 58 degrees for the same reasons described in the CPU section. We go over everything you'll need to know about this new chassis including all the optional extras you can purchase for this case. Links containing a 'bit.ly' reference forwarding to Newegg are tied to our CJ account, from which we earn a small sales commission. That’s close to the Thermaltake A500, and definitely much cooler than the Lancool One’s 60-degree average. The Lian Li Lancool II is another budget case effort from Lian Li--budget relative to the rest of Lian Li’s past cases, at least. All rights reserved. The cable management bar is nicely sized, and it can be moved closer to the front of the case to extend the motherboard tray for E-ATX support just a little without removing functionality.
Once you have received the verification code, you will be able to choose a new password for your account.
The case isn’t getting rid of the GPU’s heat fast enough. Best PC&Gaming Cases for PC Builder and Gamer.
A little bit late with this review but finally here is our full coverage on the LANCOOL II by Lian Li. There will be some delay after submitting a comment. The white version is $5 more, but Lian Li wisely sent the black one for review. Overall it’s fine, but leaning unpleasantly towards warm for a case that includes three fans. The mesh-fronted cases like the Meshify C are generally cooler, but not incredibly so for some of the more restrictive ones, like the 51.9-degree Nova Mesh TG.
Air-cooled GPUs in this case deserve additional fans in the front panel or the PSU shroud.
Either commit to making this a budget case and skip the optional add-ons (our preference), or make this a $200 case and go all-in on quality to compete for the Phanteks Evolv X fans. The hotswap backplane and USB C port being optional extras is a big miss, and we’d sooner see those features cut altogether than be done cheaply--having an empty USB-shaped hole in the front panel is just sad. Blender rendering on the CPU averaged 37 degrees over ambient, almost equal to the Lancool One, and relatively more competitive than the CPU temperatures from the combined torture test. This is an area where cases like the Phanteks P400A Digital are weak: because it has ARGB fans that are intended to be installed in the front panel, users who want to rearrange the stock fans to make room for a radiator or get better airflow are forced to break up the intended lighting. Lian Li did ship us a backplane along with many other optional extras, but we don’t support preorders and we wanted to test this case as it will ship for $90, so we didn’t install any of them. On the other hand, the lackluster thermal performance is more forgivable at $90.
The magnets that hold the steel panel sections shut are the brittle silver-y kind -- we’re not magnet experts, but maybe neodymium -- and are therefore tucked inside the corners of the panels for protection. At first, we thought it was odd to have subdivided the panels like this -- at least, beyond being a marketable gimmick -- as it just complicates everything. Beyond the usual set of tests, we tried moving the top fan to the front of the case (two intake, one exhaust), moving the top fan to the surface of the PSU shroud (two intake, one exhaust), and sticking all three fans on the front of the case (three intake). Thermal performance almost takes a back seat compared to the other features of the case.
There are a few benefits, though: First, since it’s so short, the steel section can be opened even in confined spaces to allow access to the hot-swap HDD bays under the PSU shroud. Sometimes, our 3DMark stress testing shows different results than the torture testing thanks to the limited heat generated by the CPU, and this is one of those instances. 0.8mm SGCC (Exterior, MB tray, and most of the interior), Front (multi-way fan/radiator bracket): 3 X 120mm or 2 X 140mm, Front (multi-way fan/radiator bracket): 1 X 360/280/240mm, Behind the Right-side Shroud Panel: 2 X 2.5″ SSD, 1 x Top (magnetic), 1 x Front Panel (magnetic), 1 x Bottom (tray). With the case fans set to 100% speed and reportedly running around 1400RPM, case noise hit 42.8 dBA. This scored the worst result of all, at 63.6 degrees over ambient. The hinges on the steel section are screwed into place and therefore not as easy to remove. The Lancool II averaged 53 degrees CPU dT with these fans, about 3 degrees better than the stock test.
There’s no really great way to get a bunch of cool air to the GPU with just the stock fans. As long as the fans are kept back from the front panel, ventilation does exist and could be brute forced with the purchase of some additional fans--but be warned, it’ll be noisy. There’s also no way to open the top set of glass doors without opening another panel: there are no handles except on the steel doors, and the glass edges are all nested behind other parts of the case. The Lian Li Lancool II is another budget case effort from Lian Li--budget relative to the rest of Lian Li’s past cases, at least. Testing is completely automated using in-house scripting, and executes with perfect accuracy on every run. The best possible no-front-panel temperature was 48.6 degrees dT, almost exactly mirroring the CPU deltas for these tests. Clearly Lian Li has had to fight tooth and nail to hit that $90 price point if they’re charging $5 extra for white paint (painting the case white is legitimately more difficult).
We’d like to have seen that optional modularity added, as we couldn’t identify a reason that it would be impossible once that extra hole is added. 3DMark Firestrike Extreme’s stress test is GPU-intensive and realistic to a gaming workload, and our test GPU averaged 53 degrees Celsius over ambient under this workload.
The hard drive sleds are another weak point.
We gather from the manual that this is supposed to provide a mounting location for sticking on third-party RGB or fan hubs, which is a thoughtful touch considering that Lian Li doesn’t use that mount for their own RGB controller.
We’ll first look at a noise-only chart. 55 degrees is a bit warmer than the original H500P, which was terrible in most ways thermals, and equal to the stock Meshify C (the Meshify C requires some additional fans to perform really well). Since the fan tray can be moved around, we also tried pushing it forward a little to get the fans even more flush with the mesh filters. We appreciate good built-in RGB controls, even if these buttons are very obviously replacing what were two additional USB ports. One example use case would be that you’ve configured a RAID5 set of three hard drives in your $90 case and that you also had a drive fail within the life of the system, and that you also needed to keep the system online while swapping-in the replacement drive for a RAID rebuild. Again, there’s only one intake fan being affected by the removal of the front panel, and it’s doing the job of both CPU and GPU intake. Thermal benchmarking is conducted for 1400 seconds (23 minutes), a period we've determined sufficient for achieving equilibrium. There’s also a mysterious third cover over the back of the CPU socket.
Like the CPU thermals, 55C is still on the warm side, and we had a hard time improving significantly over that average without additional fans. It’s the successor to the identically MSRP-ed $90 Lancool One, a case that we were mildly pleased with at the time but lacked the wow factor of Lian Li’s O11 line. Moving the three fans up to be flush with the front filter raised temperatures further to 58 degrees for the same reasons described in the CPU section. We go over everything you'll need to know about this new chassis including all the optional extras you can purchase for this case. Links containing a 'bit.ly' reference forwarding to Newegg are tied to our CJ account, from which we earn a small sales commission. That’s close to the Thermaltake A500, and definitely much cooler than the Lancool One’s 60-degree average. The Lian Li Lancool II is another budget case effort from Lian Li--budget relative to the rest of Lian Li’s past cases, at least. All rights reserved. The cable management bar is nicely sized, and it can be moved closer to the front of the case to extend the motherboard tray for E-ATX support just a little without removing functionality.
Once you have received the verification code, you will be able to choose a new password for your account.
The case isn’t getting rid of the GPU’s heat fast enough. Best PC&Gaming Cases for PC Builder and Gamer.
A little bit late with this review but finally here is our full coverage on the LANCOOL II by Lian Li. There will be some delay after submitting a comment. The white version is $5 more, but Lian Li wisely sent the black one for review. Overall it’s fine, but leaning unpleasantly towards warm for a case that includes three fans. The mesh-fronted cases like the Meshify C are generally cooler, but not incredibly so for some of the more restrictive ones, like the 51.9-degree Nova Mesh TG.
Air-cooled GPUs in this case deserve additional fans in the front panel or the PSU shroud.
Either commit to making this a budget case and skip the optional add-ons (our preference), or make this a $200 case and go all-in on quality to compete for the Phanteks Evolv X fans. The hotswap backplane and USB C port being optional extras is a big miss, and we’d sooner see those features cut altogether than be done cheaply--having an empty USB-shaped hole in the front panel is just sad. Blender rendering on the CPU averaged 37 degrees over ambient, almost equal to the Lancool One, and relatively more competitive than the CPU temperatures from the combined torture test. This is an area where cases like the Phanteks P400A Digital are weak: because it has ARGB fans that are intended to be installed in the front panel, users who want to rearrange the stock fans to make room for a radiator or get better airflow are forced to break up the intended lighting. Lian Li did ship us a backplane along with many other optional extras, but we don’t support preorders and we wanted to test this case as it will ship for $90, so we didn’t install any of them. On the other hand, the lackluster thermal performance is more forgivable at $90.
The magnets that hold the steel panel sections shut are the brittle silver-y kind -- we’re not magnet experts, but maybe neodymium -- and are therefore tucked inside the corners of the panels for protection. At first, we thought it was odd to have subdivided the panels like this -- at least, beyond being a marketable gimmick -- as it just complicates everything. Beyond the usual set of tests, we tried moving the top fan to the front of the case (two intake, one exhaust), moving the top fan to the surface of the PSU shroud (two intake, one exhaust), and sticking all three fans on the front of the case (three intake). Thermal performance almost takes a back seat compared to the other features of the case.