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Lian Li PC777-B Anniversary Edition
Aluminum PC CasingManufacturer: Lian-Li
Distributor: Hampton Technologies
MSRP: $300
Happy birthday to yooooou, happy birth daaay to yooooh... Oh hi everybody (embarrassed)! Didn't quite notice you where here already. Hey, you guessed it already, it's someone birthday. Well not birthday, more of an anniversary! Lian-Li has been around in this harsh business for 20 years already... 20 years! I was thirteen back then... and remember that time frame quite well. It was the year that I organized the first ever computer club in my neighborhood. Yeah all geek all the way back then already. Although a Sinclair ZX Spectrum, well it was called a home computer, yet you can think of it as a modern calculator right now. That little computer had rubber keys, 48KB of memory, displayed 16 colors and for sound it made beeps. Not exactly Shader Model 3 or sound wise a X-Fi ;)
The first thing you'll notice about the PC casing we test today is that it's shaped, well rather peculiarly. I've been giving it some thought and I can only come up with words like wind tunnel, airflow and my favorite of these three: "snail". I have no clue why it is shaped the way it is. I however do know that it is gorgeous to look at. The casing is called the PC-777B where the B stands for black anodized aluminum (there is a standard anodized aluminum colored version available also, look at the flash animation on the right).
Well my friends, specially for that 20 year anniversary this is what Lian Li unleashed onto us guru's. And today we'll happily test it for you guys. Quick hint, is it any good? Yeah of course it is, it's a Lian Li for heaven's sake.
The company Lian Li is known by reputation for manufacturing aluminum PC casings (and desktops nowadays). Why aluminum? Well mostly for its light-weight construction (cheaper transport) and for us geeks more significantly it cools our dazzling gaming rigs way better. There are several ways to cool down a PC silently, take for example water-cooling. But there are other ways for sure. Lian-Li noticed this a long time ago and for some time now have been manufacturing PC cases that have the cool look, a sweet design and is very effective when it comes to cooling itself.
Today's anniversary PC-777 is 100% made out of aluminum and it does not stop there. Next to being designed as a looker it has been developed to chill down the PC, an astounding PC case with some appealing airflow techniques. This mid-tower sized PC housing we'll talk about today is the newest case from the Lian-Li. 100% aluminum, supposedly has silent fans and its lightweight design are the keywords here.
Lian-Li has a well known reputation in this type of business, pretty looking aluminum cases is what gave them their reputation. When I looked at a flyer from them I noticed that aluminum design is more than just a nice looking case. Aluminum has several other advantages. For one the case is seriously light, I think it averages only five kilo's.
The PC-777 series casing is a mid-sized tower with 6x5.25, 6x3.5" internal with a FDD bezel and 1x CD-ROM bezel. There's more to the Lian-Li case though, this model has 2 additional 120 mm fans located internally in the front and rear of the casing. Not your regular fans, nope we'll show you in the photo shoot how weird (in a mostly good way) everything is with this PC case.
The PC-777 features great design and craftsmanship. Although the outer covering shape is unusual, the internal design is extremely spacious. The design of the PC-777 base is specially designed to allow optimal air flow. The "snail" design disposes of hot air with a special-purpose turbine wheel air outlet.
Furthermore, the case makes use of easy to use thumbscrews and easy securing of the aluminum plating and really easy installation for the HD's. The case is BTX ready, (a new upcoming main board form factor) however you do need to order a BTX back plate after which you can actually use that optional feature.
All these are features that both you and yours truly love to see and most of all need and seek in this modern age PC.
Before we startup the review in full I must warn you that this article will contain a huge amount of photo's as we like to show everything. So if you are on dial-up modem connection, please be patient. We think that seeing is believing. Pages can take up-to 300-400 KB per page to load up.
Yes ... Lian Li's new case logo.
