Review System

Assembly

To install the motherboard, simply place it on the pre-installed spacers. The center spacer has a bit of a lip to align the board easily. As you can see, there is a ton of space towards the front and top. While the openings on the shroud line up well, these would really benefit from grommets to keep things super clean in the end. To put a GPU in place, remove the covers and secure it with a thumb screw. Once again, there is loads of room, so you should have no issues installing quite literally any GPU of your choosing.


Adding a 3.5" drive to the metal tray means you have to put rubber grommets into place first and screw it into place. This is a bit of a departure from the tool-less or spring-loaded focus Lian Li has given to other aspects of the chassis. Adding to that inconsistency is that you still have to secure the tray with a small thumb screw once filled.


In stark contrast to this, the two visible 2.5" trays each have a spring mechanism. All you have to do is push it apart and snap in your drive—that's it!


To include an AIO for your build, simply mount it to the removable top plate. There is plenty of room, so you won't have to worry about it colliding with your motherboard. Even so, due to the massive heatsinks of today's modern boards, getting to the CPU power plugs, while possible, is a bit tricky, so you better connect things in that top-left corner first.


Adding the power supply requires mounting the frame first using classic screws and sliding it into the Lancool 3 from the back. In the default setup, you should be fine when using mainstream units, but those opting for long ones will clearly have to free up room by taking out the HDD tray.


With everything installed, the interior wiring is as short as it gets, and as the GPU power plug is on the middle of the card, that shortest route was through the floor. Not having grommets here does put a tiny dent in things, but only visually as those are the only visible cable-routing openings from these classic viewing angles. In the back, the unique Velcro-equipped cable-management system does an excellent job, so we only used two zip ties, which are actually optional as well. Once the two doors are closed, the Lancool 3 looks incredibly clean as only that CPU power wire running up the right edge is visible. Maybe in the Lancool 4, Lian Li could add a small, third cover to truly hide everything.

Finished Looks

With everything put back together, the Lian Li Lancool 3 continues to look massive and hefty. As we are reviewing the non-ARGB variant, there are no distractions when turning the system on. There is only the soft white LED around the power button.


In the front, you can clearly see the three 140 mm fans doing their job by pulling cool air into the case. In the rear, that exhaust fans in the top and all the wiring is exactly what we would expect to have for a running system.


The sides of the Lancool 3 look gorgeous, allowing you to see all your hardware clearly thanks to the lack of tint. That glass panel on the backside of the motherboard tray also really drives home that sense of symmetry from the chassis.