Lian Li SUP-01. Aesthetics, Performance & Unique Cooling

Have you ever seen the airflow of a graphics card visualised? Has it ever crossed your mind what might happen if a graphics card was used as a main airflow inlet for your PC? It is something that we've considered, it would certainly be an interesting set-up, and something we’d quite like to test.

This year Lian Li released the Sup-01 which looks set to answer these questions. The case features a 3 chamber design to separate the graphics card, motherboard and AIO, we’re excited to get into this and share our results.

Case Overview

At first glance all seems fairly normal, it’s a mid-tower ATX case, with a tempered glass side panel, all other panels are mesh. It has a few quirks which could change the cooling game. The graphics card is to be mounted at the front of the case, where you would typically find inlet fans, using an included riser cable for the connection. To allow room for the largest graphics cards (up to 400mm) it has made the case quite tall. Connecting your display to the graphics card is a bit of a pain as a result of it’s placement. There are 3 included black non-RGB 120mm fans mounted to the mesh side of the case set to exhaust with space next to them for a 360mm radiator. This setup pushes the motherboard to the centre of the case, giving fantastic visibility of the internals once populated, which also comes with 1 drawback - there is only 88mm clearance for the cooler, so we wouldn't recommend you try to use an air cooler. There is also an included 120mm fan housing with mounting points on the rear of the case - it’s unusual to find what is an external fan housing, but once mounted helps to give the back of the case a unique look, though I had trouble getting past it looking like a Minecraft pig! The mount doesn't come with a fan included, so if you intend to use it you will have to buy one separately.

As a nice touch the Lian Li logo at the bottom of the case functions as power and reset buttons. To the side of the case we have 2 x USB-A, 1 x USB-C, a headphone jack and 2 buttons to control the mode and colour of the case RGB (though you can control via software too). The base of the case has a housing for 2 x 2.5” SSD’s and an ATX PSU up to 220mm.

Side note: it is worth mentioning that this case is back connector compatible, though we have decided to not use this feature.

Parts List

CPU - Ryzen 7 7800X 3D

Graphics Card - ROG Strix RTX 4080 Super RAM - 32GB Kingston Fury (AMD EXPO) Motherboard - ROG Crosshair X670E Hero PSU - ROG Aura 1000W

AIO - Lian Li Galahad II Trinity

STORAGE - Kingston KC3000 2TB

Why Did Did We Choose This Hardware?

As the case uses unusual cooling methods we needed to put together a high end build to push the capability of the case. The ROG Strix 4080 Super filled up the space at the front of the case nicely and being a 3 fan unit should allow for a really clear airflow visualisation. The

Ryzen 7 7800X 3D should get warm enough under load to be able to accurately check the cooling efficiency afforded by the radiator mounting position. It will be interesting to see how the motherboard heat shields and the RAM hold up as not as much airflow as normal will be getting to them.

What Was It Like to Build In?

The build process was straightforward, though it felt like there was quite a lot of stripping the case to begin with to get the AIO and fan mounts out. There is an included accessory box, which contains more screws than we’d ever need, the box itself has lots of dividers to separate out screws which is always useful. Over the years we’ve become accustomed to attaching the cooler before mounting the motherboard in the case, but here it didn’t seem feasible with the cooler pipes going into another chamber and so we had to change tact, but it all worked out fine. There is plenty of cable mounting points behind the motherboard to keep everything nice and tidy. All things considered it is a well thought out case from a building perspective.

Airflow and Performance

As we mentioned at the beginning, we were keen to do an airflow visualisation with this case. The unusual setup for cooling made us wonder how it might perform. We’re pleased to say the configuration we went for did not disappoint! The Strix 4080 Super did a fantastic job of sucking air into the case - aided by the static pressure created by the exhaust fans and it all looked as if the build would stay sufficiently cool during use! You can see from the video that the air taken in by the graphics card fans is exhausted out of the mesh side panel and the air vented through the rear inlet makes its way over the motherboard and should keep that cool too. Now we’ve seen how it works, we need to dive into how did it perform?

First up we tested Spiderman Remastered. This game is difficult to run for the most optimised systems, and we decided to push it to it’s limits and set graphics settings to the ‘Very High’ preset at 4K. After about an hour of testing we’re pleased to report we got smooth gameplay at over 100 FPS (102 min - 142 max observed), with the CPU maxing out at 58°C and the GPU at 64°C.

Next we tried Forza Horizon 5 as it’s a graphically intensive game. We set it to 4K and the ‘Extreme’ preset. The results were very similar to the above after about an hour of testing - over 100 FPS (107 min - 132 max observed) with the CPU reaching a max temp of 62°C and the CPU capping out at 59°C.

We also ran the built through CPU-Z and Furmark 2 to see under maximum stress how the airflow configuration handles cooling and were pleasantly surprised. We ran both tests for 1 minute, the results:

CPU-Z max CPU temp - 72°CFurmark 2 max GPU temp - 60°C with a hotspot of 71°C

Roundup

The Sup-01 brings something different to the table, a configuration not often seen. Its form factor is unique, allowing big components to take up less desk real estate and its airflow

design worked flawlessly. Everything worked as planned, we built a system to try to push the case to reasonable limits but it feels like it can handle more than we can throw at it. It is well made, is easy to strip and reassemble.

Overall it is well designed and manufactured. We love that the case comes with exhaust fans preinstalled - it makes the build easier and increases the value proposition.

Would we recommend this case to a new PC builder? Probably not as it is a very non-standard build, but if this isn’t your first rodeo then we think most would enjoy the build and aesthetics on offer.

Watch the full video here:

Blog written by Sam Thwaytes