With classy wood trim and five fans included standard, Lian Li’s Lancool 217 delivers solid airflow performance and a host of unexpected features in a PC case at its price.
Let’s list a few things you won’t find in a typical mainstream-priced PC case: spiffy wood trim, more than four fans, or a powered fan hub. Combine these with a full load of basic features, such as multiple drive trays and filters on all intake-fan locations, and that should result in a premium chassis that costs north of $150. (Even if you cut back on the structural materials, it’s a challenge to get all that goodness much below that price point.) That calculus makes Lian Li’s Lancool 217 something of a cool enigma: a $119.99 PC case that packs the feature set of a model that usually costs $40 or $50 more, and looks good doing it. (Think PC case crossed with 1970s wood speaker cabinet.) We give the Lancool 217 an Editors’ Choice award as a top value among mainstream tower cases.Design: Feature Overload for the Money
We tested Lian Li’s black version of the Lancool 217, outfitted with dark walnut trim; the company also offers a white version with beech accents for a $5-higher list price. We expect a case at the Lancool 217’s price to include a pair of intake fans and an exhaust fan, but Lian Li goes one better by equipping this model with an extra pair of fans mounted to the top of its power supply tunnel.
Lian Li continues its splurge by securing the corrugated mesh front panel with magnets and surrounding it in nicely finished wooden trim. Its designers also decided to secure its left-side tempered-glass panel with snaps at the top and tabs at the bottom. Plus, that side’s vented lower portion is removable, with sliding tabs along its length and a screw at the back.
The power button, on the top panel and metal-skinned, features a power-on indicator LED behind a small rectangular plastic diffuser. It looks striking.
Oddly, a second power button is positioned in the classic “front panel” group along the front edge of the lower left side-panel. Positioned exclusively for people who like to be able to see inside their PC while they work or play (i.e., who have their tower on a desk or table), the group includes a headset combo (headphone plus microphone) jack, a pair of USB 3.x Type-A ports on a Gen 1 internal cable, and a Type-C port on a Gen 2×2 internal cable.
A few features are hidden underneath the Lancool 217, such as the one-piece rear foot that conceals a rear-panel power jack, and three sets of slider slots for attaching Lian Li’s two internal drive cages (included) in various positions.
Here’s a look at that power jack, along with the reason it’s located there: The power supply bay is designed to hold the power supply either longitudinally or transversely, and a cover plate is factory-installed to encourage transverse mounting. If you do the transverse mounting scheme, the power cable from the PSU gets fed from this rear port. Barely long enough to cover its air inlet, a power supply dust filter slides out the back of the case through a notch in its one-piece rear foot. Here you can see it partly removed.
The rest of the rear panel features a removable expansion slot module that can rotate to support the vertical installation of a graphics card via a riser cable (not included). Also back here are four slots on a dual-pattern fan mount that allow a 140mm or 120mm rear fan to be installed at any height within the range of the motherboard’s I/O panel. A 140mm exhaust fan comes factory-mounted, and a notch near the top of each side panel makes it easier to pull these away from their upper-edge snaps.
A vent along the lower edge of the right side’s panel feeds air to the Lancool 217’s center fans and drive bays.
