Installation:
The
Lian Li PC-A77B full tower chassis had the following components installed for the review:
» Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 dual core processor
» Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme CPU Cooler
» eVGA NVIDIA nForce 790i Ultra SLI motherboard
» OCZ Technology EliteXStream 800W Power Supply
» OCZ Technology PC3-16000 NVIDIA SLI-Ready Edition 2GB Kit
» Two Western Digital Raptor 10,000RPM 36GB 3.5" hard drives
» Seagate Barracuda 7,200RPM 80GB 3.5" 3Gbps Hard drive
» Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1TB SATA 3Gbps hard drive
» eVGA GeForce 8800GTS G92 512MB video card
» Samsung 20x DVD Burner with LightScribe
The installation of components into the Lian Li PC-A77B full tower chassis isn't like most other cases. It provides the flexibility of multiple options for a variety of components; which may or may not make things easier for you. In addition to planning out how you would like to install certain components, others are lacking tool-less installation mechanisms to make things quick and easy.
The installation of components into the Lian Li PC-A77B full tower chassis is not meant to be a quick process. With all of the different configurations there are many ways to install a few things, not to mention that most tool-less items are thumbscrews.
The hard drives were installed first. In many cases you insert some plastic rails in the screw holes and slide each drive into a cage. This case does have a cage, but it is designed much differently. Each hard drive needs four special thumbscrews and four rubber rings, shown in the below left image. You can see two installed into a Seagate hard drive, with the special thumbscrew and rubber ring apart and together. The rubber ring will prevent vibration between the hard drive and cage. In the below right image you can see three hard drives installed into the cage. Once the drives have the rubber ring and thumbscrews in, you need to slide it in and push the drive down. There is yet another screw you could use for added security, making sure the drive will not budge in the cage.
In the image below I have the hard drive cage installed back into its original position. This is the second case I have reviewed with removable hard drive cages with attached 120mm fans. Compared to the Cooler Master Cosmos S case's hard drive cage, this one from Lian Li was much better. It was easily removed and did not scrape along the chassis.
