Great price for this Lian Li DAN-A3 mATX PC case.
Black Wooden — $99 @ PLE. Expired.
White (no wood) — $109 @ PLE.
Black (no wood) — $99 @ PC Case Gear.
Black (no wood) — $107 with code BYDPC @ Centre Com.
White (no wood) — $101 with code BYDPC @ Centre Com.
His videos are cinematic and descriptive of its case form and functionality. His videos does this case justice! Solely purchase a case of his video myself.
Sometimes he has a bit too much fluff but definitely quality videos. I particularly like his fogging air flow tests.
thankfully we can skip straight to the fog airflow demonstrations.
this is a very nice case if you can pull off a good pc setup with this you will have a sweet looking setup.
mmm should i upgrade from my 10 year old Phanteks Enthoo EVOLV Micro Tower mATX
Also rocking the enthoo evolv atx version. Deciding whether downsize to this for better space saving as the pc case lives under the desk and I'm in a small apartment. Love the enthoo's design though
Yeah, mine is wicked, it was like 70 bucks on eBay in 2016.
its on the floor in my office so space isnt really an issue for me
has had three different builds in it.
Wow, I remember a time when Lian Li were a premium brand.
Lian Li still make $300+ cases.
It's a collaboration case. Dan and Lian Li
This is still a premium case, easily in the top 5 for 20-30L cases.
The Nautilus was dope and then they started doing yachts, trains and spaceships. Good times.
White is also available at $101 from CentreCom with their unique code BYDPC. Free shipping too.
https://www.centrecom.com.au/lian-li-dan-a3-matx-mesh-micro-…
PLE or PC Case Gear
That depends what colour you want.
Both good stores
That's so crazy. I literally added this into my wishlist yesterday at PLE.
Anyone have some good fan recommendations for the case? XD
My fan setup. Just basic cheapo thermalright. Went with them as centrecom had stock at the time and also have reverse fans for aesthetics.
I'll look up the model number if interested.
Your setup looks great! Definitely interested
Thermalright TL-S12
Thermalright TL-S12R for the reverse
if you're not a fan of rgb, I went with 140mm (c14) x 3 / 120mm (c12) x1 from thermalright - quiet and adequate (pa 120 aircooled 9800x3d/5080)
There's some 3d printer brackets (can get shipped to you on etsy) to mount the psu in a clever way / have a 140mm front fan in the wood case.
To those considering the non wood version, there is no air intake from the front due to a solid plastic front panel. Wooden version has slats with gap for air intake in the front..
Might help someone..
Yeah, wish I knew this before buying, bought the wooden face plate from Ali separately.
Should I upgrade my Asus AP201? Will there be an improvement in the size?
It's more sideways
I really wanted an AP201 for my 9950X3D with air cooling, but PCCG ran out of stock, and CBF waiting for all the bits from another store to come into stock.
So instead of risking it being too loud in an A3, went for Torrent Compact.
You'd obviously need to double check all your parts still fit in an A3 too, e.g. PSU, CPU cooler (only 5mm difference but it's there), etc.
Wouldn't wood (heh) be a thermal insulator, keeping heat in rather than dissipating it like metal chassis cases?
Heat shouldn't be leaving out the front, that's intake.
Besides the case shouldn't be doing much of the dissipating if you have airflow and only a tiny bit on the front is actually wood. There's probably more plastic on most cases than wood on this.
Sure, but only the slats on the front are wood.
Irrelevant here it's used for intake, not exhaust
I know this is kinda lazy asking, but what should I put in it? It’s been forever since I built a pc. Thinking mid spec, can play games at reasonable res. Not a hard core gamer but want to play some. Can anyone point me to some suggestions? Intel or AMD these days?
There's heaps of great example builds here
https://www.reddit.com/r/mffpc/
IIRC, there's a seller here on OzBargain that lets you upgrade their mid-range PC to an A3
I just bought a prebuilt pc from Nebula from a link here on Ozbargain. Comes with 7800X3D and 9070xt, i upgraded to this case and still around $2.5k.
This is the way. Those PC builders get everything in bulk, so they end up a fair bit cheaper than doing it yourself. A case swap is really easy with this case too due to it's great compatibility.
Definitely on the fence trying to decide on one of these or the Thermaltake Tower series cases. Downsizing to one of the Minisforum boards soon as a good deal comes up
Is the wood of shite quality though?
yah it's the shiteist of the shite woods en houzen shizaaahousen complete shizer, may catch of fire and cause catastrophic damage to your property, but use at your own risk.
Great case. Completed my build on this few days ago. Got the AORUS GeForce RTX 5080 MASTER 16G installed using the VGPU kit. Arctic LF III 360 (had to replace CPU-side fan with a slim one. LF III is not compatible with this case so had to make few adjustments ), one 120mm rear exhaust, one 140mm front intake and no bottom intake. Idle temp (9950X3D) is 42 degree Celsius (ambient 20). My 2 complaints are the radiator cannot be inserted from the top and with a big GPU mounted vertically, connecting DP/HDMI cables can get a bit tricky. I could not use the provided PCIe bracket grommet as the cables and the GPU did not line up.
Sounds great. How did you place the PSU?
Mounted on the motherboard-side using 3d printed brackets. It's a Corsair SF1000 SFX.
Nice job. SFX would definitely help in your build.
Why would you mount the psu like that?
Gotta admit I've been pretty keen on this case since it was posted a couple of weeks back.
Maybe it's time to downsize my old Antec P182… It's pretty much empty now anyway
Do it!
Almost did, went to pull the trigger about an hour later but alas it was all over (black wooden it's gotta be).
The P183 (mistakenly thought it was the P182) lives on for now… maybe it'll come around again in a few weeks.
P182 series, how good were they
Wooden version is the best version to get with it's better airflow intake
Another one to look around for is Asus AP201. It's slightly bigger with better cable management + fits slightly more parts
@abowen: Nice looking case. Idk about the front I/O placement though. Having it at the bottom is so nice.
@heef: Yeah fair enough, there's lots of cool cases to check out
https://www.jonsbo.com/en/products/D32PROBlack.html
https://www.jonsbo.com/en/products/D31.html
https://www.deepcool.com/products/Cases/CH260-High-Airflow-M…
https://www.sama.ltd/products/sama-im01-pro-black-micro-atx-…
A3 certainly is the most popular one this year
@abowen: Jonsbo's killing it in the budget end. I think the appeal of the A3 is local availability. Having it shipped in a week at a decent price was a huge plus.
@heef: Yeah agreed. I don't have the time / patience for building PC's anymore, so I paid PCCG for mine
Otherwise Jonsbo's Z20 with a handle would have been near top of list
My NZXT h500 has busted front IO and had the side panel off since I upgraded to a 6800xt cause of the rubbish airflow (temps dropped almost 20 degrees haha). Seems like a no brainer.
I got mine for $136 from Centrecom recently which for me is only $2 more than this deal with postage and is still in stock. The jonsbo Z20 from AliExpress looks pretty interesting, 20L and still with decent compatibility if you don't want 360 AIO but shipping takes a month, A3 seems to be best small matx local stock and the wood is a nice decorative bonus.
I swear this wasnt the case before. Is the wood from ple now back to RRP $145?
Yeah the wooden $99 has expired. Deal updated, thanks.
hmmm tempting
I need a few new/spare cases cause i feel like with all the spare pc parts i can make a couple pcs lol
This case is great, I've currently got the plastic front plate, wood on the way. 9950X3D, 240 AIO, no other fans, GPU mounted horizontally right at the bottom.
Great temperatures. Sapphire Pulse 9070 XT undervolted -110, +60, VRAM 2750 MHz. Under sustained load, Hogwarts Legacy maximum graphics, FSR4 using Optiscaler, ray tracing on, temps are GPU core 54°, 77° hotspot, VRAM 74°, CPU under 60°. No air con on, 30° outside, ventilation partially blocked on three sides due to the desk mount.
Is this at 4k? What fps are you getting? Just wondering what i can expect.
Yes, 4k.
Depends on the environment and amount of ray tracing. I had shadow and ambient occlusion ray tracing on and it dipped to around 40 FPS in outdoor, spacious environments, while being 60+ inside the castle. I turned off those two and left reflections only on and am getting between 70-100+. Still fiddling around with it but it runs fine and I didn't really mind the 4X FPS.
Now just need a deal on a good SFF 1000W pSU
are u serious, got the wooden white one four days ago from centrecom
You're good, that one isn't on special
Would this be a decent choice for a basic i3 setup, no GPU, and a few HDDs setup in RAID for Home Assistant / Plex server?
Figured noise and cooling would be hopefully good enough, love the compact size and look of this one.
HDD support isn't really a strong point for this case. It'll do 2.5" drives, but that's more for SSDs, as those size HDDs are slow AF. It does officially state it can fit one 3.5" drive at the bottom if you wish.
It said till stocks run out for the promo prices, and on the a3 wood stock never ran out still three stores have it in stock. So PLE is sorta dodgy as last time it was $99 till literally stocks were all in the red in all stores. As it reverted to $145 when still in stock ( when it said till stocks run out) PLUS PLE suddenly decided to stop price matching all of sudden like a year ago, they are getting dodgy (and have their sales have have always had a elitist PC attitude young dudes, with more ego then sense, but you would use them to price match)
I mean it's not uncommon for sales like this to be capped, sometimes retailers only get a specific amount of promo stock at a specific price and once that's sold through the rest is at a higher cost. Their website even says "Sale runs until promotion stock is exhausted" so idk how that's dodgy… can't disagree with you about the sales attitude though lol, guess that's what happens when you hire kids out of highschool
Fantastic case, built in the all white model 2 weeks ago. If you haven't got the parts yet, an SFX power supply makes it a bit easier to build in, but ATX will also fit.
The wood looks good with the black case, but in my opinion the white wood version looks a bit weird. The all white version is better.
Having the solid front panel on the all white hasn't been a problem for me. Got the PSU mounted on its side, fans pulling in from the side panel.
I like how it doesn't try to stand out.
Oh god! Unfortunately, the black wooden is expired.
The wooden ones remind me of the inside of the elevators at work.
You must work in a fancy building
it reminds me of the old atari console
Brilliant case, mesh sides so over tempered glass
Yeah the glass side panel is sold separately.
it apparently also hinders airflow
would this fit a 4080 super
Great case. Easy to build in. Small enough without being ridiculous. Definitely check the dimensions if you're putting in a big bad boy graphics card. Great airflow. I built up as a productivity with an RTX A2000 so no problems for space. I paid full price and it was worth every dime.
A good video exhibiting this case by Mr Matt Lee