The Lian Li DAN A4-H2O focuses on liquid cooling in a compact package.
The Highlights
- The A4-H2O is designed by DAN and manufactured by Lian Li
- A lack of cable management features makes tidy builds more difficult
- Clever airflow from the top-mounted CLC keeps GPU thermals under control
- Original MSRP: $155
- Release Date: February 9, 2022
For the second of our revised Mini-ITX case reviews, we’re looking at the Lian Li DAN A4-H2O. It’s specifically designed for accommodating, as the name suggests, liquid cooling in the form of a 240mm CLC. The name is H2O, despite the fact that Lian Li’s website contains multiple instances of both H2O and H20. It also has some impressive GPU thermals for the size due to clever airflow management, but there are drawbacks, including the cable management.
It’s available for $155 at the time of writing, putting it up against options like the Fractal Terra (that we recently reviewed) and the Cooler Master NR200P, with comparable prices depending on the exact model. At the time of writing, the Terra tends to be around $180 and the NR200P is around $145. There are tons of Mini-ITX cases out there these days and we’re only getting started rolling into more reviews of them. We wanted to get to this one next because, as another sandwich-style Mini-ITX box, it has managed to position itself as one of the mainstays.
Credits
Host, Writing, Testing
Steve Burke
Writing, Testing, Web Editing
Jeremy Clayton
Testing
Patrick Lathan
Camera, Video Editing
Vitalii Makhnovets
This design has roots that go way back, and Lian Li has brought it forward over the years, so this is going to be an important one for us to keep developing our test methodology. We’ll continue to iterate on our process, but we need to test a good cross-section of cases to establish future test parameters and conditions. There’s an exploratory phase to methodology development, and that’s what we’re doing now with Mini-ITX. The A4-H2O makes a good fit to follow our Terra review then, since it’s a more ‘traditional’ ITX design. Check out our Terra review for more discussion on how specifically we’re approaching ITX reviews as a whole.
Lian Li DAN A4-H2O Mini-ITX Case Specs
| COLOR | Anodized Black Exterior Silver Exterior |
| DIMENSION | (D) 326mm x (W) 140mm x (H) 244mm |
| CAPACITY | 11L |
| MATERIALS | Aluminum Exterior SPCC Steel Interior |
| MOTHERBOARD SUPPORT | Mini-ITX |
| FAN SUPPORT | Top：2x 120mm |
| RADIATOR SUPPORT | Top：1x 240mm (55mm. max total thickness with fans) |
| PSU SUPPORT | SFX, SFX-L |
| GPU LENGTH CLEARANCE | Max 322mm |
| CPU COOLER CLEARANCE | Max 55mm |
| DRIVE Support | 1x 2.5” SSD |
| EXPANSION SLOT | 3 |
| I/O PORTS | 1x USB 3.0 TYPE-A, 1x USB 3.1 TYPE-C, 1x Mic, 1x HD Audio. |