Lian Li’s new Rotation PSU has a power connector that swivels and I too have been asking, why?

Computex always delivers copious amounts of things that swivel and twist for who knows what reason—just ask Lian Li’s motorised curved water cooler. But I didn’t expect to see a power supply of all things to get the swivel treatment. This power supply featuring swivelly tech is from Lian Li too, so let’s go back and ask them what exactly is going on here.

What’s going on is the company has decided to make the power connector portion of a power supply rotatable by 90 degrees. My reaction to this came in three phases. First: What the hell is that for? Second: Oh, that’s what it’s for, but why the hell would you need that? Third: Oh, that’s why you’d need that, that’s hella cool. True story.

The long and short of it is this seems to be something Lian Li has done to allow for different cable management in different systems. The power connector rotates onto one side of the PSU or another, meaning inside your case the power cables can jut out of it in one direction or another.

I wasn’t entirely sure how useful this would be, but the more I think about it the more it makes sense. For instance, just look at the rear side of the Lian Li O11 Vision case, our current pick for the best budget PC case (image below). With the power supply in its pictured rotation, the cables jut out and must take a circuitous route to the passthroughs. If the PSU could be rotated, the cables would have a more direct route.

It might not be the most exciting thing in the world—not when you have a gaming mouse with a fan inside and weird and wonderful PC cases on the Computex show floor—but I’m here for it. Something simple and practical.

There is one concern with this, however, this being safety and longevity—it could add a big point of failure to a PSU to have stuff moving about in there. I’m sure it’s all been designed with that in mind and it’s not like any capacitors are being spun around in there, but it’s still surely a concern when compared to one that has zero parts that swivel.

Still, I can’t help but be impressed by the simple ingenuity of this: a simple mechanism that might make a lot of practical difference in someone’s build. Forget all that glitzy RGB and bendy screen nonsense, give me a solid, simple, practical improvement any day.

This ‘Rotation PSU’ seems to come in a couple of configurations right now: 1,000 W and 1,200 W, designated by RS1000G and RS12000G monikers respectively.