TAIPEI—It’s not often that a familiar PC component takes a new shape entirely.
Last week at Computex 2024, we stopped by the booth of legendary PC parts maker Lian Li. The DIY company is best known for its highly engineered PC cases, traditionally using aluminum but lately a trendsetter in the glass-dominant "fish tank" PC case wave. Its iconic O11 series has been much imitated across the industry. (See our latest review of one, the Lian Li O11 Dynamic EVO.)
This year, though, Lian Li is targeting two different DIY categories: all-in-one coolers and power supplies.
Grooming Your AIO: HydroShift Poses Your Hoses
Anyone who's installed an all-in-one liquid cooler in a PC knows that you end up with a big hoop of liquid-cooling cables dominating the center of your chassis. Whether you install your radiator in the front of the case or at the top, the cooler has to have enough slack and flexibility in its hoses to accommodate variable placement. And as anyone who's tried to tidy up a case knows, you don't get a lot of flex with liquid-cooling hoses—they're stiff and unruly, and you don't want to tie them down or L-bend them for fear of impeding the flow.
(Credit: John Burek)With its new HydroShift series of AIO liquid coolers, Lian Li is doing some cleaning up on that front. The company is using what it calls "server-grade" hoses with more flexibility to allow for much better hose routing—or, more accurately, hose hiding.
The ability to bend the hoses more tightly while maintaining their internal shape has enabled Lian Li to install a set of retaining clips on the edge of the AIO. Now, using the clips, you can route the hose down the side of the cooler, hidden from view, and only have it emerge right above the CPU water block, minimizing case clutter and adding trim visual appeal.
(Credit: John Burek)The cooler also accommodates different installation schemes and cases with flipped motherboard installations. You can position the clips on either long edge of the radiator for appropriate routing. Once you've routed your hoses, a removable plastic cover over part of the radiator housing hides the whole thing.
(Credit: John Burek)The HydroShift series will come in three variants, all with nifty 2.9-inch, 480-by-480-pixel circular LCDs atop the CPU water block. The HydroShift LCD 360S ($179.99) is the base model; the HydroShift LCD 360RGB ($259.99) adds RGB fans to the radiator; and the HydroShift LCD 360TL ($259.99) employs a thicker radiator for more cooling surface area and a slightly larger water block.
(Credit: John Burek)The coolers are available only in 360mm lengths, which makes sense given the length needed to restrain hoses for a clean look. Expect the HydroShift AIOs to hit the street in Q3 of this year.
A New Shape for Power Supplies: Lian Li Edge
Even more innovative are Lian Li's new Edge series modular-cable power supplies. We'd call them the most radical PSU design change we've seen since the implementation of modular cables ages ago. That's a strong statement, but just look at the body of these power supplies.
(Credit: John Burek)What Lian Li has done is create a shelf out the back of the power supply on which the modular connectors live. Suppose you're mounting a PSU vertically in a case (as many dual-chamber chassis require). In that situation, the new design gives you easy access to the modular connectors even after the power supply is installed. In conventional PC builds, you must install your modular cables before installing the power supply; if you want to add or remove any, or mess with them after the fact, it's usually an ordeal involving uninstalling the PSU amid a tangle of cables.
(Credit: John Burek)The Edge design is a genius move from a usability point of view in cases that require the vertical mount. Corsair has made a parallel move with its Shift power supplies, which put the modular connectors on the open face of the PSU facing outward, but the "shelf" of the Edge PSUs seems to make more sense for many designs, allowing more space for the modular cables to flex.
A Lian Li rep told us the new design employs a single circuit board that extends from inside the power supply body into the shelf for less complexity in manufacture. In addition, the power supply's blank face (where the connectors would typically be) hosts a USB 2.0 header hub, not a typical PSU feature.
(Credit: John Burek)Why is there a need for that? These days many motherboards, equipped with just two, run out of USB 2.0 headers due to the demands of various accessories (such as CPU coolers with onboard screens) and the PC case USB ports themselves. Here, you can run a cable between a USB 2.0 header on your motherboard and the input connector on the Edge power supply. The PSU acts as a header hub, giving you four USB internal connections (netting you three more, technically, since one on the motherboard is feeding the hub).
One additional creature comfort: Lian Li has designed a clever SATA power cable that clusters all the connectors. If you have, say, a load of internal hard drives you want to hook up to SATA power, you may not want them strung out across a long, gawky SATA power lead. This design lets you pull them together on a short part of the strand and manage them more cleanly—another small but welcome design move.
(Credit: John Burek)
(Credit: John Burek)The Edge power supplies will come in white and black, with 1,000-watt and 1,300-watt versions in white and a greater variety in black. MSRPs are $149.99 for a black 850W; $189.99 and $199.99 respectively for black and white 1,000W models; and $229.99/$239.99 for black/white 1,300W units. A $119.99 black EG850 model will have a flat mesh top instead of the geometric design of the others.
(Credit: John Burek)Look for them in July. We awarded the Edge PSUs a Best in Show from Computex 2024 for their innovative design, and we can see them being a hit with builders working in dual-chamber PC cases.