A Closer Look - Outside

The chassis itself looks quite nice. Being the K62 and thus the high-end variant of the Dragonlord series, it features a window, a full set of fans along with an all black interior. The frame is constructed of steel while the top and front use plastic as a material. Lancool started out with cases which use a steel & aluminum combination - I guess that has changed now. The plastic feels fine around the edges, but is not very strong on the front and top. It would have been nice if Lancool could have reinforced these parts more. Overall, this may be disappointing for some who may go as far as to call this a dealbreaker, considering that Lian Li - the company behind Lancool - has never used plastic in such a way for their cases before.


Looking straight at the front of the chassis, it consists of straight lines, which are formed by the separate drive bay covers. You will not find any visible dividers as the drive bay covers are designed in such a way to perfectly compliment each other. This also means, that there is no 3.5 inch bay and Lancool is not providing you with anything if you wish to install such a device into one of these bays. If that is the case, you better be prepared to go out and spend some more money, or the thought may cross your mind to grab a Lian Li case with such an adapter instead. Turning the K62 around, it becomes apparent that Lancool has chosen to situate the PSU bay on the bottom of the chassis.


The main side of the case features a window which is held in place by metal screws. This does set it apart from the competition, which generally uses plastic parts to secure the window, but also creates some obvious problems. First off, there is a large crack around one of the screws. Metal simply is not as flexible as plastic, so if the chassis in mishandled during transportation such damage may occur even without dropping the package. Then I was surprised to see that there was a single screw missing. It was completely M.I.A, as it was not even rolling around in the retail box anywhere. Lancool has kept the other side of the K62 completely solid without any air vents or other openings.


The top of the chassis design is created by placing a plastic part on top of the metal frame. In the front you will find the power and reset buttons along with the usual set of USB 2.0 and audio connectivity. These are recessed fairly deep within the chassis, so you may have trouble plugging in some devices. Behind that are the two 140 mm ceiling fans, covered by a simple and pretty fragile plastic air vent.


Taking a closer look at the rear of the chassis, starting with the bottom, the power supply bay may not look like anything out of the ordinary at first, but Lancool has included more than two sets of screw holes than necessary - do not ask me what they are for. Above that are the eight mainboard expansion slots. This is one of the few mainstream chassis we are reviewing, which comes with an additional such slot, perfect for those mainboard brackets or for those wanting to throw four dual slot GPUs into the system. The area above that holds nothing out of the ordinary. You will find an 120 mm exhaust fan and two rubber lined holes for water cooling tubes in this area.


Below the top cover the two Lian-Li labeled cooling fans can be easily reached. They are both equipped with blue LEDs. Taking the top off, I noticed the next piece of damage, as one of the clips which holds the cover in place was already broken off - too bad.