Assembly

Before we dive into assembly, let us take a quick look at the cables within the A7010. They are of the standard variety and Lian Li provides both HD Audio and AC'97 plugs. The one missing feature would have been a SATA connector with a metal clip to hold it in place.


The mainboard can be installed outside of the case, as you may remove the tray. But honestly, with a case this large, there is plenty of space and you save yourself a step of having to guide everything back into the case. Besides, the tray does not allow you to install add-in cards outside of the chassis anyways. As you can see, nothing but space all around the board. The cables are conveniently routed through a hole under the lower edge of the mainboard. Simple, but effective for easy cable hiding.


The same mentality as above goes for the power supply. You could use the frame and slide the unit into place, but there is so much space, simply put it in place and secure it with four screws - done. Virtually any power supply on the market should easily fit here, no matter how big.


Installing the hard drives in the hot-swapping bays requires the same steps usually taken when installing the unit in a traditional drive. Instead of securing the unit within the cage itself, you have to screw the handle to the device. Then slide it in, push the locks into place and you are operational.


The optical drive on the other hand is still done traditionally. Lian Li has naturally supplied the needed screws to hold the unit in place. Removing the covers to make space for drives does not require any tools as you can just pull them out easily.