Impressive: Lian Li O11D EVO Case Review & Benchmarks

[Music] we've got an interesting one for you today this is the lienly 011d evo it's a new revision with massive changes from the existing lanley 011 line of computer cases this one follows the more original 011d series where it's for larger computer builds it's not like the air mini but it has some major reworks like the fact that you can invert it and it's one of the most mechanically brilliant ways we've seen of inverting a computer case it's so good that it's actually not a completely pointless gimmick and that's pretty rare for us to say about invertible cases because it could be cool it's normally extremely painful to do but lanley has done it right here unfortunately it's 170 184 different color variants and then there's more than 100 of optional add-ons one of them sadly is even the mesh panel that you're probably going to see in just about every review that's 20 extra let's talk about this case and all of its extras in today's review before that this video is brought to you by evga's x570 dark motherboard the evga x570 dark is a high-end motherboard for am4 cpus built around extreme overclocking and tested heavily by evga's kin pen the x570 dark has a uniquely rotated socket and ram layout 90 degree rotated cables for ease of installation and management and tons of troubleshooting features to make building testing and overclocking easier check out evga's x570 dark high end motherboard at the link in the description below the evo retains the original appearance and overall stout nature of the 011d it's more expensive than the original 011d which was 130 at launch neither of them offer fan stock you have to provide those yourself but beyond looking sort of similar and also being stout and dual chamber where you've got power supplies and drives over here and everything else over here there's not much else that's the same at least not on a technical tooling level because this has been completely redesigned reworked and there have been several tooling changes all throughout the case so it's more or less a brand new case as usual the d version of the o11s are intended to be used with water cooling but they work completely fine with air cooling and we found them to be some of the better performers in fact even better than the 011 air when it first launched that was a tragic combination of excessive mesh and dust filters to the point that it suffocated the case despite being named air but those were the early days of what lee lee was trying to learn which was basics of airflow apparently anyway the 011d series has done pretty well and the reason if you're not up to speed on it is simply because despite the glass front panel and the glass side panel there's a side intake and it's heavily ventilated a lot of options to bring air in despite the air coming in and hitting the glass and sort of making an angle turn into the components for the most part it works well there's also bottom intake which works fantastically for gpus because you can't really get much more direct than putting a fan a couple inches below the video cards fans and forcing cool air straight into it so they've worked pretty well uh whether or not it's intended for water cooling let's just start with the most interesting aspect of this though the thing we wanted to show off is the invertible nature of it where uh the point of inverting a case is partly for looks but then also partly for the uh side of the desk or the floor that you might put it on where you want it oriented based on where you would typically sit or have your computer positioned there can be other benefits than that like with the silverstone raven o2 for example which is a naturally inverted case there's not another option it actually ends up performing extremely well in that configuration and it's one of the more interesting case studies in an invertible case so we've taken off all the panels you don't technically have to get all of them off of there but it's a bit easier to do and safer and now all we have to do is push case entire chassis with the build mind you which is pretty cool slides forward and then you lift and borrowing any cables underneath there's the computer that's the whole thing you're basically holding the case in your hands at this point except for the base and then all the panels here and then flip i wouldn't recommend doing this with a build in it it gets a bit cumbersome but can be done so we flipped it reoriented it on the rails and then you just pull back screwing these two screws on the bottom put all the panels back on it's done now the system is inverted faces the other way so what this does obviously moves the video card to be facing up that could potentially be really cool as a display piece if you want to show it off through the top it could be interesting for water cooling it could be interesting too for air cooling because you've flipped the system obviously mirrored it and uh it completely changes the cooling configuration so gives you some more options but mostly it's just sort of really mechanically satisfying that it's this easy and to emphasize how easy this is also so patrick wrote the review for this and he and keegan did the mechanical work with inverting it previously this recorded on camera is the first time i've personally done it they kind of pointed it out to me but i hadn't actually inverted it before doing that just now and it was more or less real time it took me maybe two minutes minus some wasted time fumbling around trying to realign it on the bottom of the the rails here so extremely easy to do you shouldn't invert it with the system built especially if it's water cooled don't do that but the fact that it can be done is just a testament to excellent mechanical design enough of all that though let's get into the build notes from patrick we'll talk about the thermals that i wrote and we'll go from there on if this case is actually worth it or not side panel attachment is a lot different from previous 11 cases the front panel and both side panels are now attached with snaps and they can be removed without taking off the top panel which is still held on with its usual two caps of thumb screws this is the best of all options here because every panel is easy to remove and it can also be fastened securely to the chassis it would be nice to see a similar tab on the metal side panel but we've been informed that the production version of the case will include magnets at least prevent the panels from rattling the case has changed to positively since their power showed it in february so you should more or less consider this a new case at this point the hinged io cover front door and the optional hot swap bays for example have been replaced with a more general purpose drive mounting plate that can be subbed in for the side radiator mount liam lee also cut down the type a ports from three to two but it now has an add-on i o kit instead i o ports include two type a one type c and one four-pole audio these are in discrete units that can be moved to the left or the right of the case from its stock location at the front power reset and rgb control buttons are on the left side of the case but the power buttons wrap around the front of the case and can be pressed from two different directions on the motherboard side the emily has combined the front panel headers into a single connector which is a much larger quality of life improvement than it sounds the kill management channel between the power supply or combined hard drive cage and the side fan mounts is so deep now that it's difficult to access the tie points at the bottom even though we tried so hard we weren't able to satisfactorily tie cables down to the included velcro straps so in the end it didn't even matter and we had given up it's just a handful of complaints but we can't help the fact that everyone can see these cables there are tie points for straps to be run across the whole cable channel so it's possible to just wad everything up strap it down and bolt the cable cover over top of it without any visible evidence the cable cover is the same design that's been used in every other 011 but with the welcome addition of a second thumb screw at the bottom no more forgetting about a tiny countersunk screw and bending the case by accident the two fan trays at the bottom and top of the case are interchangeable which is fantastic especially in an invertible case because it just makes it easier to work with instead of plastic clips that break like were found in the o11 xl previously lee lee now uses screws it's much better much less likely to break also the star of the show is the side fan mount which ejects with a spring-loaded lever and can be flipped to mount fans closer to or further from the side panel it can also be replaced entirely with an included drive mount this may also be useful for general purpose mounting of items like pumps and reservoirs maximum radiator compatibility is listed as 360 ml for the top the bottom of the side mounts all of which are accurate the side mount has the most potential for conflict with the other two but it can be spaced back far enough to give clearance to any normal fan or radiator combo the optional front mount included with the mesh front kit conflicts with the top and the bottom trays though and it brings the maximum radiator or fan combo compatibility in those locations down to 280 mil instead without the legs the 011 xl is 48.5 centimeters tall and 47 centimeters deep the evo that's the new one is 44 centimeters tall and 46 and a half centimeters deep despite the evo's xl-ish size motherboard support is still limited to just atx or according to lan lee anyway e-a-t-x with the width under 280 millimeters the motherboard tray cuts off sharply at the width of a standard atx board 244 mil for that so anything larger will hang over the edge cable cutouts are perpendicular to the tray they won't be blocked by oversized boards but the tray also doesn't offer any structural support beyond just the usual atx a returning 011 feature here is the ability to swap the power supply in the hard drive cage placement or remove the hard drive cage altogether and install two power supplies it's very unlikely you'll need this if you're doing some extremely extreme overclocking but without ln2 then it starts to make sense but an unlikely use case the hard drive bays within the cage are not hot swappable but they were in the 011 xl so this is a pretty stark contrast between the two the case has two power supplier hard drive cage mounting locations versus the xl3 another big difference and that gives the evo's hard drive cage some elbow room which can also be used to stick a 60 ml fan on any of the four mounting points on the cage liam lee has moved to a more standard mesh pattern with the evo eliminating the need for magnetic filters in all locations except for the bottom of the case the filters were the cheapest feeling element of the older o11s and we really don't miss them the single magnetic filter that is included with the evo is an unusually complex shape but it's for a good reason it's so that it can be shifted over if the case is inverted and this is some really good attention to detail that we'd like to see from a case manufacturer on the subject of the bottom vent we're a little disappointed to see that the case legs only give two centimeters of clearance versus the xl's still uncontested three and a half centimeters finally we're talking about all the accessories for extra money leanly offers an upright gpu kit with pcie gen 4 riser for a painfully expensive ninety dollars it has a vertical gpu kit for seventy dollars an additional i o kit for twenty dollars a front mesh kit for twenty dollars an io kit for the top for thirteen dollars and it's basically the car upgrades approach where they just overwhelm you with options and hope that you say yes and add them all to the cart but there are some actually interesting ones in here with the separately purchased upright gpu kit a gpu can be mounted to the front of the case on the optional side drive mount this is in stark contrast to a typical vertical gpu mount because it puts the gpu in front of the case and leaves all the extra pcie slots open and usable and it's also a truly unique display piece display cables have to be routed through a rubber grommet at the rear of the case the grommet is wide enough to fit even dvi connectors not that you're likely to use those at this point but the cutout next to the gpu is a bit narrower at 1.5 centimeters bulky ferrite cores on hdmi displayport or other connectors won't fit this kit technically works on its own but because it seals off the side vent you basically have to use the mesh front panel kit with it as well and that's an extra cost so that actually in reality put you closer to 110 to do a gpu in this configuration and that's on top of the case price the non-prototype shipping version of the kit now requires the riser cable to be routed through the case interior ribbon cables are messy they're ugly and they get in the way of everything lee lee likely had valid reasons for this choice and it's probably related to signal integrity and length of the cable but that doesn't make it look better for a feature that's entirely looks driven we'd be a little happier with this kit if the non-riser cable parts were sold separately or instead or just included with the case they're not that expensive without the pcie 4.0 cable because then the kit would just be a couple of metal brackets and some screws that should be thrown in there with it though the kit costs more than half the price of the case itself and again your cable is going to be on garage display right in the middle of the case in the most visible way possible without even the gpu to hide it because you've moved it to the front of course maybe you want to display your 90 cable in the most obvious glaring way possible just to feel like you got value out of it as a final note we found that some holes on the support bracket in our sample kit were not threaded we asked the lanley about this and they said it was a pre-production issue we can't be sure whether it actually is or if they fixed it we had to tap our own threads though on a glorified 90 bracket kit so we certainly hope they'll fix it as for the vertical gpu kit it's more similar to the ones we've seen in the past from lee and lee and everyone else the kit replaces horizontal expansion slots rather than fitting in next to them so gpus can sit far enough away from the side panel to get some airflow if they are air cooled like the vertical gpu mount in the o11 air mini it can be moved up or down between two choices of mounting location the upper location leaves four expansion slots below the gpu enough space for a network card or some other pcie device we found that the instructions included with our kit incorrectly duplicated the steps we're using the upper mount so just be aware of that and the kit only works in normal mode not in the inverted mode as for the 19 additional i o kit it's exactly what the name says the form factor is identical to the stock front i o but without an audio jack it can be mounted in any of the locations that the front i o can and multiple kits could theoretically be added simultaneously if you had a ridiculous board that supported them all the front mesh kit is the most important of the add-ons it's the one that we'd make the strongest argument for as an inclusion in the case even if it maybe affected the price this includes a front mesh panel with the same hold density as the stock side and top panels as well as two fan mounting rails that can be adjusted for 140 or 120 millimeters the side intake vent is completely adequate for cooling but the mesh front panel becomes extremely useful if the side vent is blocked by the drive mounting plate or the upright gpu kit there are very specific dimensional requirements for combining the upright gpu kit and the front mesh kit so get your ruler out it's important that you check it carefully the numbers we're showing here are the up-to-date corrected specs from the reviewer's guide straight from leanne lee finally since no one can apparently agree where front io should be the only has split the difference and has decided it can be everywhere there's the repositionable i o and two-way power button already included in the case and then there's the top i o kit which is one more option here this is simply a replacement for the stock aluminum and plastic strip at the top of the case but with the holes for the front i o group note that this is designed to match the stock i o not the additional i o kit so if you want to use both then the stock unit has to be moved to the top this case could easily become a complex matrix of add-ons and the stock options so do some research on it before you start ordering stuff because some of these things won't work well with other things that we're talking about time to get into thermals testing for this case is complicated mostly because it doesn't include a set of fans liam lee has plenty of suggestions for configurations and its guides but we decided to do what we've done for the last few zero fan cases that's using our standardized fan setup which is applied to every case we review at one point or another for that reason we're starting with our standardized fan thermals chart but with a very strong reminder here this isn't always the best test since we're making some cases worse normally they get better but an example of worse one would be the torrent you wouldn't realistically move from its two 180 ml front fans and multiple other fans just to two 140s and 1 120 but that's what our standard fan test setup is for we'll include stock results for those cases as well and we'll talk about them in our torture workloads momentarily but uh we're focusing on the standardized test for now all glass front tests for the evo were done with two 140 fans side mounted and mesh tests were done with them front mounted here's that first chart the o11d evo with glass ran at 49 degrees over ambient for the cpu obviously duplicated since there's no stock fans switching to a mesh front panel and moving the fans to the front we see an improvement to 44 degrees over ambient that's not a huge jaunt but it's still a big improvement you shouldn't use mesh for the front if you're only using side mounted fans though because the air will just leak out of the front you won't get as much of it to the components comparatively that has the 011d evo mesh at the top of the chart ranked alongside other top performers from leanne lee the h510 flow from ndxt does poorly with its stock fans at 10 degrees warmer but the standard did well here the 011 xl is down at 54 degrees but it's a much larger case and specific fan position comes into play where it may benefit the cpu or the gpu more than the other for standard gpu thermals the h510 flow tumbles down to the bottom and the 011d evo falls down as well it's a big shuffling of the stack the 11d evo mesh and glass results were mostly the same although we saw slightly better thermals with glass strictly because the air is now entering the side hitting the glass and getting directed mostly to the gpu it's not as split between the cpu and the gpu but overall it's still okay lanley has a stronger footing in cpu thermals though uh but thus far not a bad start torture workload tv thermals are next we'll start with the o11 series only and then we'll highlight all the evo variants to make it a little easier to follow you can pause if you want more detail from the other ones the lienly 011d evo with glass gives us a baseline of 49 degrees over ambient with the mesh variance baseline at 43.9 degrees removing the panel improves glass front thermals well you know without the glass that is by about nine degrees front mounting the gpu hurts the cpu throttles by about three degrees an hour testing but this will vary extremely heavily based on the gpu itself and is not broadly representative of results compared to other 11 cases the evo is of average performance with glass and above average for the series with mesh and that's expected comparatively the 011d evo with our standardized fans ran on the top of the stack now that's with us including good fans with it so that bumps the effective cost of the case up as well of course the torrent is the best performer that still includes strong fans and outperforms the evo by a few degrees and this is again with everyone using their stock fans now otherwise though the evo and the torrent are somewhat comparable in their results the lancool 2 mesh stock result also does well and is from liam lee corsair 7000d airflow is another close competitor with good fans thermally but obviously it runs expensive at 230 to 260 dollars the glass version of the evo is closer to the middle more comparable to the 5000d airflow or the be quiet 500dx for gpu torture thermals again highlighting all the evo results the worst result was the mesh with a front mounted gpu and the best was a glass front with standard fans now again this depends heavily on the configuration you do in the gpu you choose so it'll vary a little bit but we have a strong baseline here for comparison the front mounted gpu results will be all over the place and if you use a 3090 for instance which we don't hear the back of the card will receive limited active cooling in most instances which will impact the rear side memory thermals if you use most other cards the fin orientation will be the biggest decider on thermal performance in our instance we have a taller card and a fin orientation that just doesn't work well with this vertical front mounted configuration lanley has offered lanley gets credit for a truly unique orientation it's just not impressive thermally with our test setup for other results the glass front with standard gpu did okay for our testing and that's primarily because the side mounted fans are able to get most of the air to the gpu with less split to the cpu comparatively the evo was mostly just in the middle of things the 53 degree results had it notably worse than the 011 xl with the same fans the lancol2 mesh and also the p508 digital those were all ahead fire strike thermals are next we're only showing glass front results from here forward but the mesh front scaling will remain about the same in all the tests as we saw in the torture thermals already the 11d evo ended up at 52 degrees celsius over ambient which has it about the same as when we tested the 011 dynamic original case with a set of three side intake fans at 40 dba but these fans aren't the same between the two so it's not truly like for like and that's because it's before we did the standardized fan testing although we still had standard testing the 11d evo ends up comparable to the silent base 802 mesh which does reasonably but not impressively here and it's ahead of the 500dx and 4000d with a solid panel we don't hit notable improvements until we get to the 011xl with our same fans as the 011d evo where the xl is benefited and outperforms it here the 011d evo and this one isn't impressive at least with the glass panel it's not bad but it's not really that exciting for us thermally for cpu-only workload while rendering an animation the 011d evo ended up at 37 degrees over ambience with standard fans this makes it equal to the 011 xl and 11 air mini also with the same fans it's not distant from the td 500 and p500a both of which got recommendations from us in their respective reviews but this isn't a heavy workload overall for gpu only render thermals the 011d evo with glass ran at 24 degrees over ambient allowing the 11xl more of a lead although not a meaningful one and overall positioning it centrally in this stack so at this point leon leia's had multiple 011 designs that worked it could have continued to produce those it would have continued to sell them quite well on the market and for the foreseeable future even but the fact that landley didn't just keep producing the same things that are working and instead decided to get ahead of the eventual die-off and sales of long-standing products uh it's decided to innovate and that's excellent that's something that is admirable and more companies should do it a good deal of case companies are starting to respond well and quickly to criticisms we saw montec doing this recently we saw fractal doing it and it gives us a bit more hope than for perhaps some of the rest of the industry where we're mostly looking at duopolies so great to see though lee and lee pushing forward and trying to do something new and they do get points for the easiest conversion process we've ever seen it's easy to forget also what a huge step forward the evo is from the original 011d which overall we liked but we had some criticisms of one of the biggest ones was there's only one spot in the 11d where 140 millimeter fans fit so big change forward for that the reason it's easy to forget the shortcomings of the original 011d is just because liam lee has continued to launch 11s with incremental improvements and most of those are included in the evo the mesh the kale management and the reversible slot in fan trays are all things that we've seen in other landline enclosures by now and we're happy to see them come to the dynamic flagship version now the biggest problem with the case is probably pretty obvious at this point uh no included fans is okay but the pricing is a bit steep for no included fans and not really getting everything that should probably be included so the upright gpu kit it's just a couple of metal brackets they're really cheap to produce compared to everything else in here and they don't include them instead you're forced to buy it separately and that forces you to buy the riser cable that leon lee has chosen which brings the cost up to 90 that's the bulk of the cost in other words if you have your own riser cable technically just the brackets are not sold separately you could probably email them and ask extremely nicely to buy them and use one of your existing riser cables but that's not how they sell it now the other sort of shortcoming here is that it doesn't include a mesh panel and the reason it's a shortcoming is not because of our usual complaints about thermals because this thing does fine with a glass front and side mounted fans just like the original 011d did it's okay yes the mesh panel helps it's not necessary though the reason that it becomes a bit of a potential stumbling point for a builder is because there's so many different aspects of this that can be tweaked moved modularly changed you can slot in all of these dlc add-ons from lienly itself because of all of that it means that there are some really specific fitments between the components as you move things around and deviate more from the sort of stock version of the case which is not even this because i've flipped it over so what that means is just as you're working on designing your build take careful measurements and make sure you're going to be able to fit everything you want where you think you will because as soon as you start changing panels change the gpu location obviously the specs lee lee has provided for what fits where won't really match anymore because you are moving away from the stock layout the biggest atx compatible alternative to this that's competitive with it right now in terms of looks stature all of that is actually the only other case that's the o11 air mini it's closer to the 100 mark 110 or so and get you most of the looks here it's a bit smaller though so that's a limiting factor and it'd be a lot cheaper so that's something to consider if you're looking at this you really like it you can't justify it look at the o11 air mini see if that'll work for your build that'd be the closest you can get without leaving leann lee's brand at 170 180 there's a ton of competitors out there a couple of them just quickly corsair 5000 d airflow or solid version the 7000d is worth looking at as well be quiet silent base 802. there's also the fraxel torrent which got our case of the year award it's really not that distant in price at this point especially once you start kitting this out with all the optional add-ons and dlc options so tons of good competitors take a look at our reviews our case reviews playlist will be linked below see if there's something you like better but this case is extremely well built mechanically it's a very competent design sound well put together and intuitive and leon lee has done an excellent job with all those aspects for thermals it's okay it's a good depending on how you configure it there aren't any stock fans that's 100 up to how you build it and that'll pretty much wrap this one up so as always you can go to store on cameras access dot net if you'd like to help us out directly our volt mod maps the large mod maps that have been out of stock for months now are back in stock and shipping now if you want to guarantee you get one place an order soon because they sell through fast anyone who had a back order yours will be shipping out in the next week or so after this video uh and you can also go to patreon.com just to help us out directly thanks for watching as always subscribe for more we'll see you all next time

Channel: Gamers Nexus

Views: 116,370

Keywords: gamersnexus, gamers nexus, computer hardware, lian li o11d evo, lian li o11d evo review, lian li o11d review, lian li o11d vs o11d evo, lian li o11d evo worth it, lian li o11d evo benchmarks, best pc case 2021, lian li o11d evo pc build

Id: o0wecnSTdy4

Length: 27min 10sec (1630 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 17 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/lovely_sombrero]

It is impressive how the case can be easily inverted, but I don't really see that as a big reason for buying a case. No huge benefits from it. This still looks like a bad choice (for the price) for an air-cooled build.

[u/InvincibleBird]

Timestamps:

• 00:00 - Lian Li O11D EVO
• 03:07 - Case Inverting Done Right
• 05:33 - Build Quality
• 10:47 - Lots of Case DLC
• 16:51 - Standardized CPU Testing
• 17:37 - Standardized GPU Testing
• 18:08 - CPU Thermal Testing
• 19:35 - GPU Thermal Testing
• 20:45 - 3DMark Firestrike
• 21:39 - Blender CPU & GPU Rendering
• 22:11 - Conclusion & O11D Evo Value

[u/icoangel]

Don't really care about some of the gimmicks but it looks to improve some of the water-cooling issues the original has (able to mount a bigger rear fan and looks to be able to accommodate wider GPU's mounted horizontally).

I wish GN would case test for water-cooling performance as I don't care about air cooling, but that's a selfish wish I guess more people would just care about air cooling.