Inside the PC-A12
Inside, the aluminium goodness continues, so it will come at no surprise to hear that the PC-A12 weighs only a little over 6.5kg empty. Of course, some of the weight savings are because the PC-A12 is a fairly basic chassis with very little in the way of extras.
The inside is well finished with most edges smoothed off nicely. Where Lian-Li has judged there's a risk of the user getting cut, it's fitted protective plastic strips.
A substantial finger guard is pre-fitted to the rear fan. That's good to see but the fan makes a bit too much noise for our liking, especially when you factor in the black mesh that protects fingers and fan from the outside.
At the front are the six externally accessible drive bays plus three more internal 3.5in bays located at the bottom and facing sideways. The shape of the panel that extends backwards from the 5.25in bays makes it a little harder than it should be to install drives in the top two.
The three internal HDD bays use a vibration-dampening system that involves attaching rubber doughnuts to the drives before sliding them into the rails.
It’s a pretty simple system, although if the case is ever going to be moved around, we'd recommend fitting a screw into the middle hole on each drive to ensure it doesn’t come loose.
Due to the orientation of the bottom caddy, the front fan will direct the airflow over any drives within and upwards to the 120mm fan at the rear.