Lian Li switches gears for its latest case – good move or bad?
Atomic's love affair with Lian Li goes back to the very first issues, when we lovingly encased one of its brushed aluminium cases in a solid block of ice for an early cover shot. Back then, the no-nonsense styling and practical design set our hearts aflutter, and until recently, Lian Li's always had a place in our hearts. But the new PC-B25F looks, on the surface, like the case maestro is setting its sights a mite lower these days.
As some of our readers pointed out in our First Look gallery, a lot of cases are starting to look awfully samey, and the baseline a lot of designers seem to be cribbing from is Antec's popular P182. We can see the similarity, especially in the raised bevel surrounding the case's IO ports. This look-alike syndrome certainly doesn't help the Blue Ring; internally, the bare aluminium looks a touch plain, which doesn't help either. But what really leaves us with reservations is the similarities between this case the last Lancool we reviewed, the Dragonlord. More on that later.
The Blue Ring is pretty well cooled - two fans front and top, and one rear, which makes this a fine case for air-cooling an overclocked rig. Two rubber grommets in the case's rear also support more complex water-cooling loops, though we maintain that you're still better off sticking to an entirely internal loop. Expansion cards are secured by the tool-less design that both Lian Li and Lancool have been boasting for about six months, and one that we think is the best of the breed. HDDs are similarly treated to a simple single-screw design that cleverly locks all drives in place.
There's a good eye to keeping your rig quiet, too. The PSU rest son two rubber strips, and all the fans feature rubber O-rings that not only dampen fan vibration, but also make fan removal a tool-less job as well - great if you need to clean your fans of cat hair or random grease often. The upper panel is actually an easily popped-out fascia that reveals the fans and some other cabling. It's a very neat design.
The motherboard backing plate, while not removable, at least has a cutout so you can mess about with coolers without removing the entire board. There's even a selection of pre-installed risers, which takes at least one fiddly task out of your PC building.
The looks from the outside are plain, but unmistakeably Lian Li. Brushed aluminium is the order of the day all over the case, with the exception of a plastic plate surrounding the usual IO suspects and the power and reset buttons. These buttons themselves are solid, and have a pleasing, if shallow, action.
And we kinda dig the blue ring that gives the Blue Ring its name - a simple circular LED that lights up when the power is on. The only issue is the years of negative reinforcement that the Xbox 360 has forced upon us regarding coloured circles of any kind.
In pretty much every respect, the Blue Ring is very much an upgunned version of the Lancool marquee, and it'll cost you a good hundred dollars for the extras. It's not surprising to see the similarity of course - Lancool is Lian Li's 'budget' brand. But we can't quite see the value...
The extra C-note gets you two more fans, and an extra 3.5in and 5.25in drive bay. Otherwise, the cases offer the same tool-less design, and largely similar looks - the Dragonlord even has a black interior, which beats the plain metal of the Blue Ring hands down. If you need those extras, this is a good choice - and it's a good case, don't get us wrong! But the Dragonlord is just about as good, and a quick look on StaticICE shows it's dropped in price to as low as $160 if you know where to look.
This is just one of those rare cases (no pun intended) where the budget offering beats the premium on pretty much all counts.
Issue: 137 | June, 2012