My Lancool K62 Cabinet - Unboxing and Installation

[Skud]

So after the purchase of CM N620 CPU Cooler I was actually forced to look for new cabinet as the cooler was hanging out of my el cheapo cabby and I couldn't close the side panel. After zeroing on CM 690 II Plus (windowed) and Lancool PC-K62, I finally bite the bullet and spend some 700-800 bucks extra to get the K62. Primary reason for not selecting the CM 690 II Plus was the height which would render the front USB & audio ports and the somewhat needless HDD dock (I already have an external dock) unusable under my table. Plus in future I can install only one 2.5" or 1.8" SSD in the CM cabinet and I was also not looking for any provision for water cooling. So the final decision went in favour of K62 and in a single word, it is a great purchase. Lets start looking deeper (and bear with my pics, I am a bad photographer).


General Features:-
Case Type: Advance Mid-Tower
Front & Top bezel Material: Plastic
Color: All Black
Side Panel: SECC Steel with transparent side-window
Body Material: SECC Steel
5.25” Drive Bay (External): 5
3.5” Drive Bay (External): 0
3.5” Drive Bay (Internal): 4, all are 2.5" compatible
Expansion Slot: 8
Motherboard: ATX, Micro-ATX. E-ATX & XL-ATX not officially supported but might be possible as reported by some.
Chassis Fan (Front): 140mm Blue LED x1 (1000 RPM)
Chassis Fan (Top): 140mm Blue LED x2 (1000 RPM)
Chassis Fan (Rear): 120mm x1 (1500 RPM)
I / O Ports: USB2.0 x 2 / HD+AC97 Audio
Design: Almost tool-free. You can practically install a system in this cabinet without the need of a screwdriver.


External Features:-

The first time I held the case with my hands I felt it really heavy. Of course, its a Goliath at 9.55kg. Quickly looking at the specs of CM 690 II Plus make me realize that CM cabinet weighs almost the same (9.56kg), although it has larger dimensions. So quality has not been compromised here. The build quality is top-notch with great finishing. Heck, even the vented expansion slot covers and the 5.25" drive bay covers are solidly built. The plastic of the top and front cover feels overall solid although at a couple of places in the front it seems a bit flimsy.



The front panel is a "meshy" affair. Each of the drive bay cover has a grilled mesh with a dust filter installed. The filters are removable and washable and they can prevent quite an amount of dust! A huge dust filter is there in front of the 140mm intake fan.







Removing the front cover reveals the front fan secured to its place with anti-vibration rubber grommets and screws - perfect for silent operation. The drive bay covers are easily removable despite being very solid.

The left side panel consists of a huge transparent window which will effectively show all your hardware. I really like this but it may not be for everybody's taste. The window is completely solid without any provision of fans. The side panels are pretty heavy, and held by a couple of thumb screws. The right side panel is plain-jane affair. One negative aspect of these side panels, they are quite a finger magnet.



The top of the case contains the power/reset switches, activity LEDs, IO ports and a couple of 140mm fans held by tool-less anti-vibration screws and rubber grommets. And there's the all "important" logo way out of sight.





Here, you can see the fan mounting system closely. Simple and yet very effective. The four screws just go in four holes and remain secured.




Coming to the back you can seen the only non-LED, 120mm fan supplied with the case above the two water cooling holes covered with rubber grommets. All these fans are 3 pin so if your motherboard has a lot of headers just throw them all in as PWM or you can use them in a fan controller. In case you don't have enough 3 pin headers, don't fret, all the fans are supplied with 3 pin to 4 pin converters so you can connect all of them directly to the SMPS. This rear fan also has rubber grommets to reduce vibration although removal of it does need a screwdriver. You can see the 8 expansion slot covers which are also solidly built as stated earlier, and then there's the bottom mounted SMPS bay. Look closely to see the additional screw holes on the power supply bay - although I really don't know what they are for.




And finally at the bottom, you can see the dust filter under the power supply bay, again easily removable and washable.




Before moving inside, one picture of the accessories supplied. Far left is the bracket for power supply mounting, then clamps for cable management, an additional 3 pin to 4 pin converter, motherboard speaker, 16 rubber pads for HDD mounting, 6 short screws and 3 long screws for motherboard mounting and 2 bags of screws for various hardware which you won't need much. Nonetheless, it is better to have them. In certain situations, you will definitely need them. But more on that later.

Beside these, there's a thorough installation guide in 4 languages and a brochure of PC Accessories of Lian-Li.





Stay tuned for internal features, installation and more.

[mukherjee]

Awesomely detailed and pictorial walkthrough!

Congos boss!

[soumo27]

Congrats on the purchase... Nice review...

[Sarath]

Sweet and wicked. Nice buy there. Your PC parts now have a sweet home.

[Skud]

Thanks guys. Not completed yet...

[mastercool8695]

great one...
whats the price??

[Skud]

5500 plus shipping. I get it from ebay (ITWares) @ 6250.

[mastercool8695]

oooh

good purchase
congo..

[d3p]

@Skud: Nice walkthrough, Cabinet & pics too. Congrates.
Nice to see some Good cabinets apart from CM, Corsair & NZXT's.

[Riddick]

Very Good buy & a Nice pictorial there...
Is it available on Kolkata??? And hows the cable management so far????
BTW I was hoping to buy a cm690II adv. but seeing this ,I am truly confused....
pls help Skud !!!!!(also i wont be using water cooling in future...)

[asingh]

Really nice write up and good images.

Waiting for further updates from the OP...!

[Skud]

Very Good buy & a Nice pictorial there...
Is it available on Kolkata??? And hows the cable management so far????
BTW I was hoping to buy a cm690II adv. but seeing this ,I am truly confused....
pls help Skud !!!!!(also i wont be using water cooling in future...)

You can ask M D Computers but I guess its not available in Kolkata. Cable management is good enough (more on this later), but CM 690II adv is also good and probably a bit cheaper. Of course, you would be missing the tool-less design. Plus CM 690 II can hold more fans than K62.

[Jaskanwar Singh]

skud assemble fast. waiting for pics.
looks too good! congrats.

[Tenida]

Nice review congrats

[Skud]

Thanks everybody. Actually the build is now completed but I am not getting the time to type it down (office, you know ). Trying my best to complete it quickly.

Thanks again guys. I wish I could have completed at one go. One question, should I just update my first post with further details or add as a separate post?

[Sarath]

Do it as a seperate post. Very few people are likely to check the first post.

Did that with my own "Help me build a PC" post. Put one pic in the first post and about 6 as a new one. Or you can just link us to the first post if you wanna put it up there.

[Skud]

Thanks Sarath. Lets see what others have to say.

[Faun]

update in first post. Good review.

[Mario]

Thanks Sarath. Lets see what others have to say.

Wherever u feel like..just let us know!!

Very nice drool stuff!! I am

[Skud]

OK guys, I have made some minor changes in the last post and adding this as a new post. Those who have missed the first part can check here:-

http://www.thinkdigit.com/forum/over...ml#post1416419



Internal Features:-



To gain access to the cabinet, simply remove a couple of thumb screws holding the side panels. Inside, you will see all the standard features that any case worth its salt should have these days – a fairly large cutout near the CPU socket, cable routing cutouts, tool-less drive installation, all black interior etc. But some nice touches and innovations have been added by Lian-Li to make this case stand out. Firstly, the SMPS sits on a couple of rubber spacers comfortably without causing any vibrations. And do I mention that the PSU can be installed without any screws? Just before the SMPS bay there's two rows of holes where you can insert the cable clamp to clean up your cable clutter.

Then comes the tool-less PCI locks. These are extremely high quality aluminum locks which hold any expansion cards, including larger graphics cards pretty tightly. The lock mechanism are for the first seven PCI slots. The eighth one is held with the help of a thumbscrew. So although this is a mid tower, I guess it would happily take three graphics card on a compatible motherboard. By the way, I have only one right now and my board supports only two.




For 5.25” external bays, the top two of the five are screw-less. These are also pretty tight and can hold your optical drives, fan controllers etc. without much problem. In case you feel them a bit shaky, a single screw at the backside will make it firm at its position.




Below the five external drive bays is the hard drive cage with four drive bays with option for both 3.5” & 2.5” disk drives. The cage is secured with a single screw at top and a couple at the bottom. You can unscrew them, then release the thumb screw and the gate from the side, rotate the cage 90° to specific mount points so that the hard drives face the front fan directly, secure the cage with the screws and install and secure the gate. This might aid in cooling of the hard drives but may also increase cable clutter.



The drive trays are made of solid steel and you can remove them only by loosening the thumbscrew at the left side and raising the lock.






Here you can see a drive bay up close. It has four rubber mounts which slides in the drive bay for tool-less and silent operation. There's four marked area to use the anti-vibration rubber pads shown earlier. To install a drive just clip open the two wings from bottom, place the drive with the connectors facing at the right and lock the clips back to place. Very simple as usual and highly effective as can be seen below:



For 2.5" drives you have to use screws though.


Coming to the other side, we can see the front panel cables pre-routed with the help of a small cable tie. All the cables are fairly long so you should not have any problems. As you can figure out, a little bit more spacing at this side would have been more helpful for easier cable routing. In my case, with everything stashed at a hurry, it needed some force to get the side panel closed.



One thing I didn't pictured, the power LED connector is 3-pin wide and the center pin is not used. Modern motherboards generally have a 2-pin connector for the power LED. This means you have to split the connector to use it. Currently I am simply not using this.

One last picture of the CPU cutout area before I move on to the installation part. As you can see the top fans are nowhere to be seen so fairly large aftermarket CPU coolers can be installed without sacrificing top exhaust fans. Above the CPU area are two small cutouts for cable routing. You can route the motherboard 8-pin connector through this although that would test your patience and skill. In my case, I had to use the smaller left hole and had to split the connector and even then it was an ordeal with the N620 already installed. With no CPU cooler, you might get it a bit more easily. Besides there's seven rows of holes where you can put the small clamp or purchase and install additional clamps if you need them.





Installation:-

Sorry guys but there will less pictures in this part. I am not a professional you know .

1. I started with the SMPS, the Corsair HX750. Just placed the PSU on the rubber stands and align it properly against the rear panel. Then placed the PSU bracket into its slot, pushed and locked the bracket to its place t secure it. And believe me, the SMPS was completely unmovable. I tried to shake it by its cables but it simply won't budge. Frankly speaking, you can actually use this mechanism for transportation also although Lian-Li doesn't recommend it.




2. After that I installed the DVD writer by simply unlocking the bar of the top external bay and sliding the drive in place aligning with the holes and locking the bar. A nice click means its been hold in place but not to my liking. Being an optical drive, I don't want it to create slightest of vibrations so just put a screw at the back side. For you, it might be unnecessary though.




3. Installation of hard drives was simple as well as described earlier. One the drives had been mounted to the bay, it was just needed to slide in the appropriate place on its rubber mounts, the gate pushed down and the screw tightened to secure everything in place.




4. Next up was the motherboard and I got it out of my old cabinet with CPU (with N620) and RAM installed and aligned it with the fixed points on my K62. After that the nine motherboard thumb screws were fastened to secure it to the motherboard tray. You are advised to use the long screws at hard-to-reach areas of the motherboard.

Here's a couple of photos taken from the top after the installation of the motherboard:-







And these two just to see the fan glow:-








5. To install the PCI cards, all you have to do is to open the aluminum latches, remove the vented PCI slot brackets, push the cards into place and close the latches to secure the card. As per user feedback, large graphics card might create some problem in this mechanism but my 6950 went in just smoothly. My TV Tuner gave me a tough time though. Something's just inexplicable.


6. Finally, the power connectors and all other connectors. And cable management. Which is still an unfinished job. And then power up. And then... so far so good.











Bye for now. Will come back with temperature readings, and about the pros and cons of the case that I experience and of course, more pics.

[digibrush]

Great cabby with unique features

very nice write up

...Excelent pics of course!!!

[vishalg]

great purchase man!!!!
the cabi looks really sexy in blue

money well spent

[Skud]

Thanks guys. For its price this is really a good-featured, well-built cabby. Would recommend it wholeheartedly.

[mastercool8695]

man which mobo??
please give me the cpu cpecs also

and great one..
worth more than the price

great...

[Skud]

One from the old brigade - Core 2 Duo E7400 & Gigabyte EP45-DS3R. And thanks for the compliments.

[mastercool8695]

man its awesome..
please tell me the fulll cpu specs please...
along with the cpu cooler..
its good too... i think its more efficient than a normal one..???

[d3p]

Nice assembly dude, congrats once again & thanks specially for providing another option for buying a case within 5k budget.

[S_V]

Nice Cabby and Congrats .......

[Skud]

man its awesome..
please tell me the fulll cpu specs please...
along with the cpu cooler..
its good too... i think its more efficient than a normal one..???

Cooler is CoolerMaster N620 and yes, its definitely more efficient than the stock one.


@d3p5kor & S_V:

Thanks again .

[Mario]

Whoa!! Very very drool stuff!!