What's this FOR?
Good review... But as others it just seem to have too many glitches for its premium standing. With the storage features it strikes me as a NAS RAID tower, while not something for your basic Home or LAN PC build. That really becomes apparent as working in even a smallish tower cooler, while still making use of that top fan would limit using oppressive CPU/GPU hardware.
Didn't like the PSU filter as doesn't seem to be super simple to remove and put back. Would’ve liked to have found a few more holes for wire looms through the mobo tray, as hiding looms from some über watt PSU would be tricky. So to me, you're stuck thinking about a modular PSU, but at least that's an option and normally what I'd go with in these mini towers. The omission of a rear fan is really bizarre; although an easy mod I'm not really hoping I’d be mod'ng a $200 case. It is an error… IMO.
The #1 motivation for not considering this case is the top mounted I/O. Why they think that's smart aesthetics, it's just such foreign thinking. I want USB wires pointing up so when this thing is on a desk (where I want to show it off) I need to stand up to see when plugging something in... where the dust and a rouge staple could inadvertently find its way into a USB port (not good). Here's what they need (Lain Li you can use this if you'd like)... That whole front top perforated curved panel to be removable, so if you want a front (or top) facing O/I outputs you can flip that panel around to suit.
A really glaring "screw up" are those phillips flat-heads on the I/O. They took the easy route and it looks like crap. We shouldn’t see any screws like those on any case, and especially a Lain Li. They could do it many other ways; it looks like they took the simpletons' approach. Me, if I "did" buy this… those would get changed to some black oxide button head allens at least.
It just doesn't know what it wants to be, an expensive NAS that is normally hidden from view? A small LAN box for a somewhat über equipped hardware, that would be arduous! A nice focal piece for an office machine that a trendy professional web designer would want… exactly! A chassis to build a low power m-ATX "do-all" home machine that’s not the atypical stodgy box, okay, but for $200…
for-get-about-it!
As like others have implied a Lain Li is just no longer "a case" of aspiring to own.
And why I keep preaching… like here.
http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=153108