My old NSK-3300 and Seasonic 300w SFX were getting a bit long in the tooth, so I decided to get a new case/PSU (wanted to go ATX this time around) and upgrade a few other parts.





Aluminum probably isn't the best from a noise standpoint, but I love the aesthetics and the fit and finish of Lian Li cases. With low speed fans things stay pretty quiet. The T-LM14B-2 top panel w/140mm fan mount and BS-03 PCI cooling kit with 120mm fan were purchased to improve air flow, especially in the PCI area where it's kind of lacking with the default PC-A05NB.

Lian Li PC-A05NB
Seasonic X-650
MSI 770T-C45
Phenom II X4 955 @ 1.230V
4x2GB Corsair XMS2 DDR2-800
MSI Hawk R5770 @ 1.125V
OCZ Vertex 2 120GB
2x WD Caviar Green 1TB RAID 1

Front, rear, and PCI 120mm fans are at 700RPM (using the ULNA). The 140mm fans on the CPU and top exhaust run at about 800RPM (again, using the ULNA adapter they were provided with). The Hawk R5770 fan is set to auto, gets up to about 70*C while gaming and stays pretty quiet. The GPU is undervolted slightly, which helps keep the fans from ramping up as much. CPU is undervolted as well.

Looks nice and clean!

The bottom of the internal 3.5" drive cage can be removed, if you drill out the rivets. Then the PSU can be mounted with the fan facing up. I just removed the drive cage altogether in mine since I just have one SSD installed.

I've tried so many cooling configurations with my PC-A05NB. Flipping fans around and running stress tests.

My setup has dual 120mm exhaust blowholes, only millimeters above a 5850 with an Accelero S1. Another 120mm fan is mounted on the CPU heatsink. I have no fans mounted in the front and rear positions.

Thanks for the tips, removing the bottom of the cage is something I didn't even consider, will have to look into that. I was thinking about just removing the cage, the SSD could be mounted in the external 3.5" bay, and the HDD in the available 5.25" bay using something like a NoVibes. But I could see myself adding another HDD in the future, so if possible I'd like to keep the cage.

Did you mod the top panel yourself, or is it one that can be bought premodded? It looks like Lian Li sells a top panel with single 140mm blowhole for the PC-A05N. But I thought I read somewhere that panels designed for some other Lian Li cases can also be used on the PC-A05N.

Nice, I love the cpu LED bling on these mobos.

I used my A05N as a tech station for months, no panels on top, front or sides. I recently added the panels, tried airflow back-to-front (stock) & front-to-back, both work but front-to-back works better. I'm using a Seasonic M12, but it seems noisy in that case so I'll replace it with an X-650. I find the A05 very roomy and easy to work with, although the main 24-pin cable of the X-650 has to take a real sharp bend to avoid the mobo (not a problem with your mobo though).

Re. question about top cover, Lian-Li sells top cover with blowhole, which is interchangeable with the one on my A17 or any other Lian-Li mid tower. I've no use for blowholes, I've blocked off my A17 with clear plastic.

Yeah that's the active phase switching indicator. I guess the CPU only uses a single power phase at idle, and then all four at load? Seems to be a feature common to a lot of MSI mobos, and I'd assume this is why the ones SPCR has tested tend to be pretty power efficient, especially at idle. Power consumption seems to be pretty good as well, am getting about 75w at the wall idle, 150w while running Prime95, 150w while running Kombustor, and 230w while running Prime95+Kombustor. While playing some Borderlands, it seemed to jump around between 150w and 175w.

Bump for updates. Changed out some fans and finally got my hands on a pre-modded top panel with 140mm fan mount. Helps quite a bit with temps on the video card.

Cases with reverse ATX seem to be the next upcoming thing in quiet computing, I wonder how the top fan-aided cooling stands against a side-panel fan, acoustically and thermally.
If the top vent could be made less audible but still improve thermal performance, I see no need for a case with isolated PSU area if it doesn't host really powerful hardware.

Also, the A05NB has incredible looks .