Review System

Assembly

Installing the motherboard is done via traditional means using the spacers and screws. As you can see in our setup, the board is in its lower position, so that you have space in the ceiling. Long GPUs won't be an issue within the Lian Li Lancool 216 RGB either, even when considering potential liquid cooling setups in the front of the chassis.


There are several possible placement options for SSDs. You could utilize a 3.5" tray or show it off by securing it to one of the two plates on the shroud for which Lian Li supplies rubber rings and the appropriate screws. Lastly, as shown above, you may secure a drive to one of the two dedicated mounting plates.


Including a 3.5" drive in your build requires no tools as you may simply pull out one of the two plastic trays and snap the drive down with the tension these provide. Once filled, simply slide the tray back into the metal cage until it clips into position securely.


Even with a full system, you will easily be able to add intricate cooling setups in the ceiling thanks to the removable mounting frame. It also comes with two small covers for cable management, they're removable in case you need to route wiring down the backside without any access on the interior of the chassis.


The 360 mm unit we employ in our case reviews has plenty of room both in length as well as in terms of distance from the motherboard. As you can see, with the board in the lower position all the connectors at the top edge are still accessible. The AIO would also fit with the motherboard in the upper placement, but reaching the connectors would essentially be impossible.


The PSU bay offers plenty of room, even with the HDD cages in the position closest to the power supply. The unit is simply pushed into position underneath the shroud, and secured with classic case screws.


With everything installed, the interior of the Lian Li Lancool 216 RGB makes a very tidy and clean impression. Looking at the cable management, it provides an impressive array of options that fit all types of cables from I/O to fan/RGB wiring as well as bulky power supply leads. We did use two zip ties for the excess RGB cables, but you could get away without needing a single zip tie, and still get a great result.

Finished Looks

With the system turned on, the only thing letting you know it is up and running are the ARGB elements within the case, as the Lancool 216 RGB does not have any activity or power LED in the I/O panel.


The front looks great thanks to the two 160 mm fans with their dual ARGB elements. Whereas most brands rely on more affordable hub mounted ARGB LEDs, the Lian Li Lancool 216 RGB ships with fans that have RGB in the outer perimeter as well, which really makes quite the difference. In the rear, there is that one unique feature which we mentioned briefly at the very beginning of the review: a mounting frame for a 120 mm fan in the rear of the case. This allows you to have active cooling pulling air out across the expansion slots. This can be used for both horizontal and vertical expansion slot setups, and we dug up a random 120 mm fan to illustrate this. The backplate of the GPU in the lower motherboard position is still barely accessible as our board PCIe x16 slot uses the second expansion bay instead of the first.


Thanks to the clean, untinted window on the Lian Li Lancool 216 RGB, you can clearly see all your hardware, while the opposite side is naturally hiding all your cable routing, no matter how clean.