Gadgetory

lelee for the most part has always been regarded as the quality brand due to aluminum construction which has always been reflected in its price but it must come to a point when you using aluminum as the main material is no longer ideal since the high price may not reflect on better features or even better build quality so let's find out of this aluminum full tower the PC a76 justifies its hefty price tag of $220 now if you are into spaceship looking cases the a76 is in a completely different spectrum we have the leonie's standard design or you can see the lack of it's very simplistic with black brushed aluminum all around with only the logo at the bottom now the overall build quality is pretty decent how are the side panels are very thin and are prone to bending and the last thing you want is a big ugly dent on your side panel the internal frame however is well built and since everything is aluminum the case is very light now the front panel has venting strips on each side for the intake fans all over the small hard drive activity lights the panel can also be locked it's just an extra feature that you might utilize if you attend Len events and behind the panel we have two five the quarter inch drive bays including three 140 millimeter intake fans now I would have preferred to see an external dust filter for the fans just to simplify the cleaning process but instead each filter is attached to the actual fan and Lili has made it quite easy to remove the front fans as they pretty much just slide in place using these rubber grommets now the power and reset buttons are located at the top to keep the front clean and the rest of the connections are hidden behind the cover with four USB ports and your audio jacks and also notice the cut out for the eSATA port meaning you can buy the optional ports panel that includes the eSATA connection and of course having the connections on top of such a large case they may be hard to reach if it's placed in the confined space and then he also includes the USB 2 adapter for those incompatible motherboard and what is a full tower without top fan placement unfortunately we only get two cutouts for 120mm fans meaning no native triple rat support or any larger fans unless user modified the side panel has an additional duo 140 million or cut outs to help in the thermal Dept and included are the two dust filters to complement the fans for the side panel and in the back we have a bit more venting at the top water cooling holes and exhaust fan io area 11 PCI slots more venting on the side and the bottom mount the power supply with a remove dust filter the case also stands on rubber feet which is a must for stability and noise reduction so taking off the side panel we get the first glimpse on the inside notice this is a black on black chassis having black aluminum interior it's actually quite nice as we usually see this plane in Lumina m-- this will definitely help to calm a flash all the cables now this is a full Tower so support for ATX and hptx motherboards is available so first things first only one optical drive has to last mounting below which this massive drive cage then there's the graphics card support bracket and some rubber grommets around the motherboard tray unfortunately these rubber grommets are still quite poor and can't fall out easily and léa léa should really develop something better for a $200 case so in total of 4 fans are included the 3 140 mm in front intake fans along with the 120 millimeter exhaust and looking in the back the CPU cut out is actually quite small and will be rendered useless for mini motherboards then we have two cutouts at the top one for the 8 pin and the other for routing the fans for example then notice this large area behind the motherboard is all bare without any cable tie notches so I'm not sure while Ian Lee ignored the basics of cable management is only the front panel cables are routed through this little channel so overall very limited cable management quite disappointing for a case of this caliber now let's check out the drive cage it supports three SSDs that mount to the bottom of these dividers and in total of 12 3.5 inch drives can be installed using provided screws in rubber Komets you simply slide the drive in place and using the drive lock sort of have been the staple for Lee and Lee you can secure the 3.5 inch drives now this hole mounting system works great it prevents vibration and is relatively hassle-free however the design of the cage is questionable for a few reasons well first it is not modular so there's plenty of resistance on the airflow even if you're only using a couple of drives second the drive cage is not removable unless you take out your power tools third there are no fan mounting options on the side which holds great potential for that extra cooling and finally probably the biggest issue is the clearance for those power SATA cables for the SSDs the mounted drives are slightly more pushed in so using only the end tip will allow the connector to fit so there's plenty of practical issues with the drive cage and we really hope Leonie can justify its future pricing not an aluminum alone and finally getting on the assembly Leonie includes the motherboard thumb screws which are a lot easier to use and just look how spacious the interior is it's a great advantage for enthusiast hardware unfortunately the space is not efficiently used for example there's plenty of room at the bottom for an intake fan which is not utilized there's also no other space to route the cables from behind the motherboard tray but the three cable cutouts now installing our 11 half inches card the case pretty much devours anything you put inside of it and we have clearance up to 15 inches now the last thing I want to mention is this support bracket we have different height levels which will depend on the location of your GPU and by using these three plastic pieces two of which will clip on the bracket you no longer have the case with a sagging graphics card this feature will probably not be useful to many unless you own the heavy beast of a triple slot card now the GPU bracket will help to separate dual triple and even quad card setups however due to some motherboard layouts you may encounter problems fitting dividers between two closely placed cards now fully assembled first notice the stretched audio cable which could be an issue for some motherboards and the interior cleaned up pretty well with the use of modular cables and coming around to the back it looks pretty decent although I can't imagine it can get quite messy with a heavier build so to wrap things up the PC a76 has plenty of potential so if you're looking to mod this guy you will definitely be satisfied with the end result now the main advantage here is the size it will need 12 inch cards for breakfast and have the e ATX motherboards on the side and also great the amount of drives it can support all topped with a hassle free assembly however I keep scratching my head too while Ian Lee decided to leave out so many useful features like modular drive cages different fan options for the top and side panels and really leave us hanging in the wiring department so summing up all these features that would have made this a killer case it just does not add up to the asking price so what are your thoughts on the case leave your responses in the comments below or in the hardwick NOx forums and we'll see you guys in the next one