SFF/ITX is DEAD! - Lian Li x Dan Case A3 MATX

[Music] in February of this year Leon Lee teased one of the most interesting cases that we've seen in quite a while this is the brand new collab between lean Lee and Dan case it's called the A3 matx and I'm going to spoil this video from the jump this is a slam dunk from Leon Lee and Dan this case is awesome but I'm going to show you what's awesome about it so let's do our usual thing we'll do a build with test a thermals and then I'll let you know if it's worth your hard ear money spoiler alert it's definitely worth your hard own [Music] money let's start off with side panel removal on the A3 to remove the side panel there's a little tab on the edge of the panel and you can use your thumb and you pull that towards you you can lift the panel away from the case the rear panel is the same deal and there's a little Tab and you can use your finger in there and use your thumb and then pull it towards you and lift that side panel away from the case to remove the top panel there's two thumb screws loosen them up with your thumbs because they're called thumb screws for a reason and then what you want to do is slide that panel towards you or pull back on it and then you can lift that panel away from the case to remove the front panel the top panel needs to be taken off first there's no way around it what you want to do is put your fingers in these little notches and then pull the top of the panel towards you and then you can lift that away from the case aren the front panel in the A3 can almost be camouflaged with the wall next we want to remove the side fan bracket and there's two screws that hold this in once you remove those screws you can pull that panel away from the top and then lift it away from the case this also an included dust filter on the bottom of the case it's very easy to remove just put your finger in the little Notch and pull it away from the case as you can see it's not a very interesting dust filter but it is there just in case you wanted it for storage support this is where the A3 begins to get interesting and this is going to be the theme for the rest of this section of the video on this front panel well this is actually supposed to be installed on the side panel when you pull it out of the box but that's what I'm talking about you can have two 2.5 in ssds on this panel and it's removable with these two screws here essentially with the A3 you've got multiple locations for Drive mounting so you'll notice that there's notches along the edge here that means there's four locations to mount drives to so the top location won't work it just doesn't fit there and it doesn't sit flush the next Notch down it sits flush the third one is actually the second location and then the third one down and so and so forth you get the idea right there's four locations at the the front but that isn't the end of it with storage support in here in fact it lives on the side panel when you pull it out of the box well let's show you one of the other tricks that this case can do and I'm going to show you this again there's three more Heights you can put your drives in so at this location you can put it in the top and then we've got this location in the middle and then there's another one towards the bottom all of this means that there's quite a few considerations when it comes to compatibility and when you're building in a small form factor case that's usually the story it's better to understand what Hardware you want to use and buy a case around that don't try and make things fit that shouldn't fit but we're not done with storage yet because on the bottom of the case on the inside depending on the layout that you have you can do a 3.5 in spinning rust drive or another single 2.5 in SSD much like the SSD bracket there's quite a bit of compatibility with your power supplies as well so first of all you'll notice you've got this power supply bracket that with the case typically it's installed at the front and you've got four different height locations on the front of the case much like you did with the SSD bracket what this means is we can move it to a whole bunch of different spots and there's a lot of different considerations for Heights in terms of the power supply this will support sfx sfx L and ATX power supplies with a maximum ATX power supply length of 140 mm all this means is this will limit your your GPU compatibility which I'll come back to in a moment and when we mount it on the side there are other considerations to do with cooling as well which we'll also come back to in a moment again you've got three locations on the side of the case to mount the power supply much like the SSD but there's lots of other considerations the A3 does other typical small form factor case things like it has an extension cable for the power supply and it's got a bunch of Clips you can use to Route cables above the top of your motherboard and this will hold that cable into place you can also use that for EPS power as well and much like what we see on other small form factor is cases there's an external power connector that plugs into the extension cable on the inside of your case fan and radiator support is where the A3 really shines first of all that side bracket that we removed earlier if you want to install fans or radiators on it there's a couple considerations so first of all if you're mounting the power supply in the side location you can fit up to a 360 mm radiator here or three 120 mil fans or two 140 mil fans or a 280 mm radiator you get the idea however if you want to front mount your power supply you're limiting that to a maximum of a 280 mm radiator or two 140 mil fans or a 240 mm radiator or two 120 mil fans the Top's got a lot of different considerations here so first first of all 3 120 mil fans or two 140 mil fans at the top position for that power supply bracket if you're moving that down to the second position you've got the same amount of compatibility you need to be aware that the second you move the power supply bracket down you're reducing your GPU compatibility but we'll come back to that as well and in the lowest position you can do up to a 360 mm radiator the bonus is that at the bottom of the case you can do three 120 mil fans in almost every single configuration the main thing to keep into account is the thickness of your GPU some m8x boards have the top pcie slot in either the first or second position so you'll need to take that into account based on your motherboard and lastly on the rear of the A3 you can drop a single 120 mm fan back there I think motherboard support is pretty obvious in the A3 it supports ITX up to matx and we'll be building with an matx board in this case because it makes a whole lot more sense as for maximum CPU Cooler height you're looking at a maximum height of 165 mm in the A3 for internal Cas wiring we got a USB type-c cable we've got front panel audio cables we've got the cable for all your lights and your switches to let you know your systems up and running and to turn it on and a USB type a connector for the front panel USB 3.2 type A for front panel connectivity we've got two USB type A ports we've got a power button a headphone jack a microphone Jack and a USB type c Port it almost looks like Lan Lee wanted to allow you to install this bracket with all the ports at the top there screws here but it's not an option but it would have been very cool if you could do that now there's a lot to go through with GPU support in the A3 there's a lot of information to digest here so let's try and make this as easy as possible for you guys to understand when you've got your power supply in the front top position you're looking at a maximum GPU length of 415 mm now as you move the power supply down on the front you reduce that compatibility so in the second position you're looking at around about 344 mm and then when you move it down to the third position you're looking at 334 mm and similarly that's the deal with the compatibility if you Sid Mount your power supply as well you need to take into account that the cables that come out of the bottom of your power supply will take up some space too and that's going to reduce that even more but there's ways around that by doing good Cable Management so essentially 415 mm max if you don't want to have a 360 mil r at the top the best thing to do is set up the internal layout that's really going to give you the best balance between the internal capacity and your internal compatibility and basically just whatever gives you the best layout for your Hardware I've said this many times over the years in regards to small form factor cases and Hardware compatibility that it's much better to research the layout that you want find the correct hardware and build your system around the hardware and the case before buying anything there are a lot of different ways to measure things online before taking the plunge and the A3 matx is no exception to that although the compatibility is pretty amazing yeah there you know not everything is going to fit exactly how you want it to fit in your head so it's better to watch videos like this I'm not saying that you have to watch it but that's kind of the point of me having it here so you don't have to go out and waste money of your own and I can give you a bit of an idea of what's going on with the case like I said these aren't issues they're considerations to make and that's always the case of small form factor this is a cool little bracket basically it slots into the little notches on the bottom of the case where you've got your hard disk mounts and let's say you're not doing ssds or fans down the bottom it's got this little magnetic piece that attaches to it to give you a GPU support bracket and this comes with the case this is very very handy what if I told you though that we're not done with GP compatibility because ladies and gents this is one of the first matx cases to allow you to install a vertical GPU there's an optional vertical GPU bracket with a pcie Gen 4 Riser cable at first glance it looks like a regular GPU support bracket that attaches to the case but this one mounts to the fan cutouts on the bottom of the the case obviously if you've got no fans down there what makes this really interesting is it kind of just sits in the bottom of the case and then you'll notice you've got the pcie cutouts on the back of the case and they don't have the horizontal support brackets that leaves it completely open and the way this works is you pull these brackets out and when you remove these you can put this additional bracket in place of it and it's got this hole on the back where you can just Jam your cables through and RAM them in and make sure they don't fall out but basically the GPU support bracket sits inside the case and you pass your cables through that hole I hope this all makes sense the other thing to be aware of is when you're doing a vertical GPU bracket in this case you want to Sid Mount your power supply if you're front mounting it you're reducing the length of the whole setup and I wouldn't recommend doing that but there's one more optional case accessory it's a temp glass side panel and you can purchase that for around about $13 that's everything I think you need to know about the A3 matx for now and I know there's a lot of information with this case it is very overwhelming for me too but let's do our usual thing let's do a build we'll pick the configuration we think is the best and then I'll let you know if the A3 matx is worth your hard eared money spoiler alert it's very cheap yeah let's do a build thing [Music] [Music] lost my way from down [Music] the turn no way to save my [Music] soul I lost my lost my way he [Music] my down the way to save my soul lost my way down [Music] C no way to save my [Music] [Music] soul my way down [Music] the turn way to save my soul lost my my down all right let's take a look at The Thermals what you're seeing on your screen right now is The Thermals are quite good I decided to test with the TG panel on as well just for a little bit of comparison because it is an optional piece maybe you'll want to know what the thermal performance is like and to be honest there's only slight temperature Deltas between having the mesh panel on and the TG side panel what more can I say about The Thermals they're right here for your beautiful eyes and yeah they're fairly good okay if you're interested in any of the hardware used there's a PC pop pick list down below and you can peruse that list and see what all the hardware is but as usual there's little cards on screen when I go through all of that so you can do that bit too I know we're going to get some questions along the lines of why did you use the TL LCD fans in the bottom underneath the GPU they're reverse pitch fans and they're the only TL fans that I have in Reverse pitch that would work and happen to be the ones with the screen I only had one TL fan that follows the normal airflow path so that's why there's no LCDs on the top if that me makes sense I would have been really cool to do that I had a cool idea but when I was looking through my boxes for fans I was like hey let's use all these new TL fans that have been out for 6 months newl fans that have been out for six months let's talk about the A3 matx first of all the thing with this case is it's very confusing when it comes to compatibility and this may become an issue with the case over the long term if you don't research what whatever it is that you want in your build this is something that we typically find with small form factor cases and to be honest when you're building something smaller you kind of know what you're getting yourself into already and that is no exception with the A3 matx I know throughout the whole video I've been referring to this as small form factor because it kind of is but lean Lee's calling it micro form factor which kind of makes sense because if we compare this in size to something like the cooler mastera nr200 the nr200 I think from memory is 20 L this is 26 L only 6 L difference but take a look at this guys look side by side there's not much difference in size here now if you had to ask me if I was to choose the nr200 or the A3 right now being that you know we've built heaps of nr2 200s and use them for things I would choose the A3 every single time and here's why matx gives us way better compatibility with things especially if you're not necessarily building a gaming PC if you're building a productivity PC and you're using a smaller GPU you have access to one or two more pcie slots which makes it kind of better for people like me like I could put a 10 gig ethernet card in the bottom if I didn't put fans at the bottom as well so there is that it's cheaper than the nr200 as well we'll Circle back to that in a moment now not everything is sunshine rainbows and lollipops with the A3 because it does have a couple shortcomings the first thing that I noticed was I thought it was peculiar that you couldn't remove the top bracket to install the radiator I thought that that would probably be something that would be a no-brainer because you could in fact put the cooler in last and it would make it so much easier to put the power supply in earlier and let's say you wanted to get access to the top of the motherboard after the fact you then have to pull your power supply out then pull your cooler out rather than just having a couple screws in the top and lifting the radiator out that way I think I know why they've done it and it's for structural rigidity but after a bit of Investigation basically where all the rivets are they could do it so easily so yeah I just think that one is a little bit of an oversight but you know there's probably a reason that I don't know why they've done that when you're using matx boards the top pcie slot is not alwayss in the first position from memory a bunch of azrock boards actually use the second position so if you're putting in a graphics card you'll need to take that into consideration with clearance especially if you're wanting to put fans in the bottom and if you've got a three slot card that means the bottom of your GPU is sitting on the bottom of the case and there's no possibility to put fans in I was pushing it with using this py card as it was because of the Leon Lee fans on the bottom this card is just over three slots thick and the cud sits right on the fans and yeah I had to do a little bit of adjustment with the tension on the screws on the bottom to pull the fans down a little bit more so I overtighten them because the fans from the GPU were rubbing and I decided to leave this like this so I could tell you guys about it anything over three slots and especially for fans like this yeah just be careful with that I actually wouldn't really recommend doing it that way but again we do these things so we can learn and show you guys what to do and what not to do in these situations another thing to note with this is fan compatibility at the top on the radiator now the whole rubric let's call it a rubric of compatibility and configuration and consider ation and all that stuff is confusing for the regular person if I'm being honest and the thing that I think no one's really going to talk about is the width of fans because the fans can be 120 mm but some fans are wider than that does that make sense because these TL fans from Leon Lee they're probably 125 mm wide what that means is when you're putting the radiator in the top instead of you just being able to maneuver it in you have to account for how wide the fans are and them touching the top heat sinks for the vrm cooling on a motherboard that is something that I didn't expect to be an issue but it is so take that into account if you're using fans like this that are slightly wider than the profile of the radiator that is surprising to me that Leon Lee did that considering this is a Leon Lee coola and Leon Lee fans it just doesn't make sense that they didn't think that themselves but I guess you can't really test every motherboard on Earth but again just think about it small form sorry micro form factor things right other than that little concern I still think that the A3 matx is an absolute slam dunk from Dan Case and Leon Lee in fact I like it so much that I think I'm going to transplant most of my gaming PC into this case because of the size and the cooler compatibility even my big noock to a cooler is going to fit in here without any issues so yeah I'll probably do that after computex maybe I'll make a video maybe I won't but this thing is really freaking good so good work Dan Case and Leon Lee you guys nailed it you also nailed the most important thing about this case and that's the price if you're interested in the Leon Lee and Dan Case A3 matx micr form factor case it's going going for $69 absolutely insane value the other thing is if you were looking at buying something like the Deep cool ch60 before throw that idea out Chuck it in the bin and buy this instead because this is way better quality way better build quality way better compatibility and you're not sacrificing compatibility with a lot of big gpus don't even bother with the deool case it's crap buy this instead trust me it's going to be worth it right I'm I'm going to use it myself that's how much I like it finally I have a message for Leon Lee about the A3 matx and it's about the release for this case L Lee if you watch this video can you please not release cases a week before computex cuz we're stressed enough as it is trying to get everything organized and then we've got a whole bunch of case reviews to do because this uh probably isn't the last case review before comp Tex that we have to film so yeah thanks Le for stressing me out you're just lucky that the A3 madx ising brilliant they have to hear it they have to hear it Claire yeah it's very stressful right now ladies and gents if you like the music you heard here I make all the music it's available by clicking that join button right down there down below it's it's like you've used YouTube before it's down there somewhere click it join get the music cheapest tier will give you music any anyways I need a holiday after all of this and what to come next I'm your boy ni with gear Seekers you Peak we seek and uh we'll see you at least two more times before compy Tex for more caseview

Channel: Gear Seekers

Views: 95,971

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Id: 2-_Mlb-zxvk

Length: 24min 17sec (1457 seconds)

Published: Wed May 22 2024