A Closer Look - Inside

Besides removing the side panels for system assembly you may also remove the mesh cover. All this does is give you a bit of access to the area underneath the shroud so you may, for example, tidy up any PSU cable mess.


The interior layout of the Lian Li Lancool 216 RGB is pretty traditional, with a metal shroud on the bottom to hide the power supply and 3.5" drives from view. As with past cases, the Lancool 216 RGB also sports two individual mounting plates. These may be used to hold a 120 mm fan or 2.5" SSD each. Thanks to the arrangement you may also install a 240 mm liquid cooling setup here with the motherboard in the raised position. Lian Li provides you with the two placement choices by allowing you to move the stand-offs up to an alternate position, which reduces the space you have above the board while increasing room on the bottom edge.


Behind the motherboard tray, there is a large plate covering the opening to the CPU cooler mounting area, which you may use for things like additional controllers or the likes. Below that, there are two individual 2.5" drive mounting plates.


Beside this, Lian Li also includes a PWM fan and ARGB hub PCB. This device can power up to six fans, and has four ARGB connections. In addition to this, there are plastic clips and several Velcro strips embedded on this side of the chassis. Lian Li has designed the main cable channel around metal clips with that additional Velcro element attached to them, which should make for some beautiful cable management.


In the front, below the shroud, there are two 2.5/3.5" drive cages stacked on top of each other. They are held in place securely by a large metal tension clip system, meaning these require no tools to take out of the chassis.


Above that are the two 160 mm intake fans, which are mounted on a removable bracket held in place by thumb screws. This will make changing your setup here quite easy, should you want to install a radiator of up to 360 mm size here instead for example. Lian Li has also embedded a plate on the side towards the front, which you may flip over in case you install an E-ATX motherboard. By doing so, you retain access to the two grommet equipped cable management holes no matter what size of motherboard you opt for.


The power supply bay is pretty straight forward besides the fact that it offers two thick rubber spacers on which the unit will sit. There is plenty of room for you to use potent & long variants for your system, and the PSU is secured using screws through the rear of the chassis.


In the ceiling, there is the removable fan/radiator mounting plate. If you leave your motherboard in the out-of-the-box, lower position, a 360 mm radiator will easily fit while giving you plenty of room to still get to the connectors at the top edge of the board.


The embedded PCB is powered by a SATA connector, and it utilizes a PWM and 3-pin ARGB interface for motherboard fan and lighting control respectively. All the I/O leads within the Lian Li Lancool 216 RGB are of default and black sleeved variety. Lastly, there is a single, unified header for the power and reset buttons, which is a nice touch as it makes connecting these a breeze.