Two years isn’t exactly a coffee run, but that’s how long it’s been since Lian Li last presented us a design collaboration with PC case brand DAN Cases. (DAN is a well-regarded maker of compact chassis, based in Germany.) More than twice the size but half the price of its predecessor, the $69.99 DAN A3-mATX is full of details that will surely surprise fans of Lian Li’s previous A4-H2O design. It’s too big to be a true “compact” case, but far from a desk hog. It holds a lot of gear and delivers a lot more than you’d expect for the price in terms of features and build quality. We tap the DAN with our Editors’ Choice award as a Goldilocks PC case of sorts. The size is just about right for what most folks build in 2024, and the price makes it hard to resist.Design: Lighter, Larger, and Lower-PricedLian Li is famed for its attention to detail, so it feels out of place to call anything made by the company “cheap.” But that pretty much defines the under-$80 case market today, and the $69.99 A3-mATX is only one connector away from being a true budget box: It retains the USB 3 Type-C connector that you will find on most mainstream cases, right down to its high-speed Gen 2×2 internal cable. You also get two Type-A ports on a Gen 1 cable, along with separate headphone and microphone jacks. All of this lives on a plastic panel that, despite our camera’s trouble in capturing it, has a nifty-looking chrome-colored beveled edge pointing out of its union to the face panel above it.
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(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)
The side, top, and bottom panels are peppered with small vent holes for improved airflow and reduced weight. Even though the panels are steel, the holes in the already thin sheets leave a complete unit that weighs only 10.8 pounds including its screw pack.For those still trying to get their head wrapped around the idea of “a cheap Lian Li,” the A3-mATX has but one dust filter, and that’s just a filter sheet with adhesive-backed magnetic tape around its inside edge that’s stuck to the case’s bottom. It fits into a slight recess, to reduce the likelihood of sliding out one side or the other.
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)
Though the back appears basic, the power jack at its top hints to a more complex design than on most budget cases. You don’t get an exhaust fan on the back, but screw-in (which is to say, replaceable) PCI Express slot panels and a hinged slot-panel cover help to push the low-cost A3-mATX back toward its manufacturer’s mainstream target market.
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)
The chrome-colored beveled edge mentioned earlier is far easier to illustrate with the face panel removed. That panel, along with the side panels, is secured with ball snaps at the top and tabs at the bottom. With those covers removed, we can easily see the case’s removable side fan mount and similarly sized, non-removable top fan mount.
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)
From the other direction, we see that there’s essentially no space behind the A3-mATX’s motherboard tray to hide cables. (Without a side window on this case, that’s less of an aesthetic consideration, though Lian Li does offer an optional side window panel, as well as a vertical GPU mounting kit, as an add-on accessory if you’re daring enough to let people see inside.) Instead, you get two cable guides above the motherboard to help channel your ATX12V and/or EPS12V cables from the power supply to the back half of the motherboard’s top edge. An opening in the middle of the tray allows access to the back of the CPU socket for support-plate installation, while a gap at the front of the tray is filled with a removable tray for two 2.5-inch drives.
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)
The upward-facing power-supply mount is visible from the A3-mATX’s top. It’s factory-filled with an SFX power-supply adapter, and the factory zip-ties its accessory box to the power-supply bay’s interior. The bay and drive tray are also interchangeable.
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)
Here’s a quick look at the A3-mATX with its modules and accessory kit removed. We’ll cover the additional components that are still strapped to its bottom as installation accessories.
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)
Removing one of those installation accessories gives builders access to a 3.5-inch/2.5-inch internal drive mount that coexists with the bottom panel’s triple 120mm fan mounts. Your options for mounting items to the bottom panel include mounting three fans, two fans and a drive, two fans and included card stand, or nothing.
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)
Building With the Lian Li DAN A3-mATXThe two previously mentioned parts that were strapped to the inside of the A3-mATX’s bottom panel were the power-supply offset adapter and 3.5-inch drive-bay cross-bracket shown. The former pushes a full-size power supply back out of its hole until it’s flush with the side panel; the latter provides a relatively smooth place to put the magnet-bottomed graphics-card support. The graphics-card stand, along with two bags of hardware and a handful of cable ties, arrive inside the previously mentioned accessory box.
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)
Cables include a combined front-panel power button and LED group, HD Audio for the headphone and microphone jacks, the Gen 1 header for the USB 3 Type-A ports, and the Gen 2×2 header for the single USB 3 Type-C port.
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)
As for the parts we used in our test build: We’re still using our classic case testing kit to evaluate MicroATX. That’s only because we have not yet gathered enough data in this form factor to produce useful comparison charts. Stay tuned! Here’s a recap of the parts…
The first thing you’ll notice: As expected, we didn’t find a place to hide the cables. The second: Our legacy motherboard has a PCIe x4 slot in the space that you would expect its x16 slot to be. For GPU thermal test considerations, realize that our double-slot card sits as low as a triple-slot card normally would, but still has enough room to place a pair of 25mm-thick fans on the case’s bottom-panel mounts.
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)
The cable routing might be near-nonexistent, but the vented side panel conceals a bevy of poor cable management without hiding internal component lighting.
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)
But What About Big Graphics Cards, Radiators, and So On?Since we’re still gathering comparison data for our new MicroATX test system, our longer legacy card and the full-size power supply gave us to a perfect excuse to test fitment. The power supply (mounted up front in the case, and fed via an internal AC power extension cable) lets you mount it at one of five levels. Plus, you can install full-ATX or SFX supplies, which means a lot of possible combinations. Unfortunately, the A3-mATX’s internal AC power extension cable points the wrong direction to allow us to mount our full-size power supply up front, and flipping the power supply around merely points the case’s cable into its other side panel.
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)
One solution might have been to mount our power supply on the right side, since the below-shown orientation allowed the case’s power extension to point into open space above the motherboard. That fitment unfortunately crowded our liquid cooler off the top panel…
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)
While we could have also mounted the radiator on the case’s included side mount, doing so would have removed most of its cooling effect from our motherboard’s CPU voltage regulator. And while we might have solved the second issue by flipping the fans around to blow toward the motherboard, doing that would have reduced the updraft that we were using to move air past the graphics card. Decisions, decisions.In the end, we solved the cabling issue for our new system configuration by swapping Cooler Master’s GX III Gold 850W for its similarly recent V1100 SFX Platinum. Here’s what our 2024-era MicroATX build now looks like when installed in the A3-mATX with the alternative, smaller power supply.
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)
Now that we’ve breached the discussion of power supplies competing with fans for mounting space, we can also address the elephant in the room: Power-supply placement will be the primary factor determining radiator fitment. While a 360mm-format radiator may fit up top with the power supply mounted low, there’s a bunch of caveats to that:Side-mounting in the lowest position is possible only with graphics cards up to around 255mm long. Moving it up a notch still gives users over 80mm of space for the AC power extender to fit under a top-mounted radiator and fans, but…Side-mounting in the second-lowest position allows longer graphics cards to fit, but only with power supplies up to 120mm long (including cable ends). This leaves 84mm between the power supply and the top panel. As the AC extension cable and the power supply’s socket flange protrude around 16mm combined, that would leave 68mm of thickness for the radiator and fans.Front-mounting the power supply solves the space crunch for cards up to 334mm long, but blocks the front fan position of the side fan.Furthermore, a 280mm radiator won’t fit on the top panel with most motherboards due to ATX12V/EPS12V power-cable placement. In summary, builders must choose to either limit the top to 240mm radiators, the side to 280mm/240mm radiators, the graphics card to 255mm, or the power supply to 120mm.Testing the Lian Li DAN A3-mATXThe A3-mATX flowed air to our CPU cooler a bit less efficiently than the average small PC case, but not enough to concern us. Close proximity to the top of our motherboard helped put it in the lead for voltage-regulator cooling, while graphics-card cooling…well, failed. It’s like there was a pocket of hot air between the card and the bottom of the case that simply refused to dissipate. The curve shows what the data tells us: that the card began thermal throttling almost as soon as we started the test.
Without digging too deep, we did find that the flow-through-design GPU cooler in our newer set of test parts (not charted here, as explained above) perfectly addressed the above graphics-card cooling shortfall. So, whether you need to add fans to the bottom just to keep your graphics card from overheating is entirely dependent on whether or not your card is designed to compensate for the above issue. Seeing that dichotomy, we reassembled our old test configuration, yet again, into the case and (again) found that the old graphics card suffocated in the belly of this beast. In short, if you use a mainboard that positions your card low like ours did, and have a cooler that is not a flow-through type, consider some bottom fans if you see high GPU temperatures. On the upside, the abyss that was trapping our graphics card’s heat also trapped most of its noise, making the A3-mATX the quietest tested MicroATX case despite having mesh panels versus solid metal or glass all around.
Verdict: DAN Is the Man for MicroATXThough the DAN A3-mATX may prove a challenge to fill correctly if you have a host of high-end parts, it’s a great value if your build is not a liquid-cooled monster with a Godzilla video card. Some people prefer to show off their PC-build skills in innovative and creative ways, and the DAN will cramp their style, most likely, with the lack of cable amenities. But if you’re content with the solid side panel, you’ll have a hard time finding a better general-use MicroATX chassis for close to the same price. High-fives all around for Lian Li and DAN for a noble budget effort.
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