Lian Li Lancol 216 Black – Photonman – Product Reviews

Specifications

• CPU: Ryzen 7 5800X3D
• Coolant: Cooler Master Hyper 622 Halo Black
• Motherboard: Gigabyte B550 Gaming
• RAM: 4 x 8GB DDR4 3200 MT/s CL16
• GPU: Asus TUF RTX 3090 OC 24GB
• SSD: Samsung 980 Pro 2TB
• SSD: Kingston NV2 1TB
• Hard Disk: WD Green 4TB 5400 RPM
• Power supply: Cooler Master GX III ATX 3.0
• Screen: LG C2 42-inch 4K OLED

expertise

Lian Li 216 was great with the installation. The module allows you to arrange the cabinet in the way you see best. A reduced “water cooling mode” allows for the installation of a very thick radiator or a push-pull configuration of the radiator. So the “stock” configuration is water cooling (reducer) mode. I realize this too late, but it's not bad for me: I eventually want to switch to water cooling. According to Gamer's Nexus, the temperatures between the two aren't that different.

While building the cabinet, it was very impressive how open the cabinet was. Usually it can be very difficult to reach the 12V EPS cable for the CPU, for example, or the nearby fan headers, for example if you install a large air cooler. Since the top is completely open here, this was not an issue during construction.
216 is free high treasury. I encountered this when I wanted to neatly hide my CPU's EPS12V power cable. Maybe it's due to my power supply, but I had to “route” the cable almost straight up to connect it, even though it was connected most of the way outside to the power supply itself.

External fan

Lian Li has made a great move by providing a chip that makes it possible to mount an additional fan behind the case, in effect to remove excess heat from your GPU. If you want to connect all of these fans, you'll probably have to buy a PWM fan hub with the regular version of the 216, because only the RGB version of the 216 comes with a fan hub.

What I encountered is that in low mode, cables like the onboard USB 3.2 header (which are often quite stiff) have to form a very solid angle if you want to hide them a little.

the exams

I did some unscientific testing to see the difference between my old case: the NZXT H500 with 3x 120mm NZXT fans. Measured using the open hardware screen. GPU unstressed (in both cases of course)

Cinebench R23 – 15 min walk

NZXT H500 – CPU temperature: 68.8°C
Lian Li 216 – CPU: 53.1°C

Furmark GPU – 15 minutes of running

NZXT H500 – GPU: 74.0°C
Lian Li 216 – GPU: 61.2°C

Even though I used the motherboard's reduced mode, I was still amazed at how much better the 216 dissipated heat. I always felt with the H500 that the chassis itself and the glass got too hot and the airflow wasn't very good. It appears that a significant portion of the cooling comes primarily through natural convection from the entire cabinet. The cabinet is also quieter with the same fan curve due to the larger fans and the fact that the fans don't need to run as fast.

Conclusion

I'm very happy with the 216. For less than €100 you have a very powerful and versatile device
A cabinet that also seems to be very future-proof. Lian Li has installed very good and nice custom 160mm fans, but this of course also means that they are difficult to replace if they break down.