Lian Li
If you’re trying to add lights to a PC case, you have lots of options: LED strips, CPU coolers with lights, case fans with lights, keyboards and mice with lights, motherboards with lights, GPUs with lights, sticks of RAM with lights, even fake sticks of RAM that go into your RAM slots so that you don’t have un-RGB-ed spots in your setup.
But if all of that isn’t enough for you, and you need to take things one step further, Lian Li has a new product for you: case fans that include not just RGB LEDs with two different lighting zones, but 1.6-inch LCD screens that can be programmed to show your PC’s stats or small looping images and videos.
Fans in the UNI FAN TL LCD lineup are available in 120 mm and 140 mm sizes, with black and white color options. The versions with screens cost $47 for a 120 mm version and $52 for a 140 mm version, and TL fans without screens go for $33 and $36, respectively. The fans need to be connected to their own dedicated fan controller, which can drive up to seven of the LCD-equipped fans at a time. The screens can then be customized via proprietary software, as is unfortunately common for RGB lights and mini-screens.
One wrinkle for people who take pains to optimize their airflow: The LCD screens are only visible on one side of each fan. Normally, if you wanted to switch a fan from intake to exhaust—that is, blowing warm air out of the case instead of bringing cool air in—you could just flip it over. If you do that to a TL LCD fan, you’d be obscuring the screens. Lian Li sells dedicated “Reverse” versions of each fan that blow air the other way; Lian Li says that mounting the LCD fans the wrong way can damage the screens. The non-LCD versions can simply be flipped, like a regular case fan.
Other companies have played with the idea of putting LCD screens on internal components before—multiple companies manufacture all-in-one CPU watercoolers that integrate a customizable LCD screen on the water block that’s easily readable through an acrylic or glass side panel. You can also sometimes find air coolers with an LCD mounted on the heatsink somewhere. But Lian Li’s fans are, as far as we can tell, the first to mount LCD screens on the fans.
Do you actually need this many little screens all over your PC, showing your components’ internal temperatures and looping little snippets of video? No, of course not. But packing RGB lighting and other customizable components into your PC focuses more on what can be done than what should be done.
The UNI FAN TL LCDs can be pre-ordered in one- or three-packs starting today. The three-packs also include the fan controller, which is available for $25 extra.
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