Lian Li PC-A10 Aluminum Case

Moving our gaze down a bit we get a better view of the 5.25" FDD adapter tray.  I'm a big fan of these as the stealth look is most certainly in as well as, if you don't need a floppy slot just swap it for the bay cover you take out for your CD-ROM.  Centered below this are the power and reset buttons as well as an air intake.  The intake fan screen gets high points for looks but the tight mesh won't stop finer dust particles from being sucked into your rig.  Back to the lower bezel door, it also has the same ball bearing latch as we saw at the top.

  

The Lian Li PC-A10's roof sports a bank of access ports under a small flap.  Opening it up we find the usual USB 2.0 x two, one Firewire, as well as an audio out and mic jack.  Toward the rear is another color coded screen obscuring a 120mm top mounted blow hole.  Behind this are two small holes that are covered by aluminum hatches of sorts.  These 24mm round holes seem ideally placed for use with an external water cooling kit.

     

Left face!  Smooth aluminum... Moving on.

Contrasting sharply with the minimalist approach on the side panel is the PC-A10's rear.  The power supply, *cough*, DUAL power supply area is at the base making the normal I/O plate and exhaust fan look off at the top.  The 120mm exhaust fan is rubber mounted to the chassis to eliminate vibration and comes complete with a black screen finger guard.

  

The next picture below has your attention already.  Lian Li has seen fit to include the cable adapter that is required to run dual power supplies as well as a 12v AUX extension cable if needed.  Why would you need dual power supplies is the question though.  Think of all the talk about power hungry VGA cards of late needing separate rails to operate cleanly.  Wouldn't a few extra rails let alone an extra 500 watts or so come in handy for the power user?

Right face!  Smooth aluminum... and a bezel lock!

A look inside

Both side panels of the Lian Li PC-A10 are removable and easily so with the three chrome thumb screws on each.  With the panel gone we get a look at what is becoming Lian Li's standard sectional case design.  The case is broken up into three sections; the top for mainboard, optical drives, cards and the like, while the lower two sections are for the power supply(ies) and hard drives respectively.

The dividing panel between the sections has two cutaway areas for routing power cables and data lines through.  The edges of the cutouts are lined with plastic to eliminate the danger of any metal rub wearing into a power or data line.

 

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