SPCR

Howdy folks, long time reader, sporadic poster.

I was flicking through the Lian-Li website this evening, and came across this chassis, the A-55. It seems to be Lian-Li's interpretation of Silverstone's successful "stack cooling", with fans along the top and bottom of the case, and the PSU and HDDs moved out in front. I'm really digging the clean looks, but my concern is in relation to the PSU, which is forced to exhaust it's heat out the bottom of the case. This seems kind of counter-productive to me, what do you guys think?

http://www.lian-li.com/v2/en/product/pr ... dex=69&g=f

EDIT: Just flicked through again, and it appears you're limited to a 150mm-tall CPU cooler. I imagine a number of 120mm "tower" heatsinks would be ruled out, which would turn a lot of people off this case.

Another review: http://www.anandtech.com/show/6012/lian ... its-design

IMO, this case is simply an attempt to shorten the physical depth of the similarly designed PC-A05N. I think that case was ~500mm in depth, while the PC-A55 is ~450mm deep. Maybe the "stack cooling effect" was just an afterthought, a result of the new PSU position preventing the placement of a front 120mm fan? At least it gave their marketing department something to tout.

Looks like a rather typical Lian Li to me. I've rarely found high quality in their engineering. Using aluminium everywhere doesn't equate build quality either, but vanity. They have good cases but more often than not the design is not impressive at all. The A-55 is just poor all around.

If reduced depth is the goal, they should put the drives above and below motherboard. 350mm depth should be achievable.
The case didn't perform well in Anandtech's review.

The a-55 is a bit of a niche product and not their best one. Positioning the psu at the front does mess with airflow a little and I think most people would just opt for a μatx case and motherboard instead