Lian Li O11 Dynamic EVO - it's groundbreaking!

[Music] this white case is the liangli 011 dynamic which launched three and a half years ago this black case is the lian lee 011 dynamic evo and evolution of the 011 dynamic the names make perfect sense i never reviewed the original 011d however a year after its launch i did a build using some gigabyte waterforce hardware if i had reviewed the 011d i am absolutely certain it would have featured in get gurus best of for cases for a year or two possibly even three because this case is a groundbreaker liang li developed it in conjunction with roman hartung der bauer in germany and it is just amazing this case which looks very similar improves on the 011d it costs slightly more but it's in the same ballpark before we dive into the evo let me give you a quick tour of the original 011 dynamic so the top panel secured with two thumb screws comes away it's got some ventilation slots it has a magnetic filter then you can release the glass by simply lifting it secured by these pegs however the glass has a habit of rattling and that's the front glass you can hear front glass so the top cover holds the glass in place the side panel also lifts up to come away you will note it is also ventilated and filtered on the inside the side can be used in intake or exhaust because you can use the bottom which is filtered as intake or exhaust so you're going to have probably the bottoming intake the top in exhaust and then the side either intake or exhaust depending on your configuration you'll note here we have a couple of drive sleds around the back we have this cover [Music] over some drive bays around here we have the accessory box power supply sits there if you want you can remove the drive cad and install a power supply or secondary power supply upstairs this is a cable management plate cable management plate doubles up you can mount storage there and there we have cables which are going from the front i o and they feed through [Applause] so the main compartment doesn't have a load of messer cables doesn't have the power supply and you've got the option of putting a vertical graphics card in there should you wish and you've got many options when it comes to cooling worth noting you don't get any fans with the 011d and the same's true the evo right that's the 011d original version what have they done with the evo on paper the changes between the 011 dynamic and the r11 dynamic evo are few and far between the case is slightly larger you can install two 140 millimeter fans in the side and bottom locations where previously you are limited to three 120mm units you can now put a 280 mil radiator in the side location you can install three extra storage drives up to nine in total you've got more clearance above the cpu another half inch when you look at the case in the flesh as it were you will see that the top panel is now mesh rather than slotted and you'll note for example that the front io is down the bottom of the case which is a bit peculiar if the case is on the floor you may wonder how on earth am i going to reach it clearly that location is intended for some putting the case on the desk beside them and they're reaching for it like so also if i take the glass out i don't have to remove the top cover it just pops loose there is a location for a securing screw so you can lock the panels for transport but there we go with the front and there we have it with the side so if your case is under a desk and you haven't got a huge amount of space you don't want to reach around the back to get the top panel off you don't need to and that's the top panel coming off in the same way as before and there we have it but when you look closely you'll note that there are some changes so for example we have a bottom radiator rack and when i release these two screws i can slide out the top radiator rack drive cover once again [Music] and there we have the power supply housing so the power supply goes in like so or if you choose you can remove that caddy and you can put a power supply up top there are other features that leann lee has introduced with this new evo you can flip the case the top and the bottom are symmetrical so by removing the top cover and the feet on the bottom you can turn the chassis upside down put the covers back in place and lo and behold you've just reversed your pc there are two reasons you might wish to flip your pc one is to literally move the pc from the one side to the other the other more practical reason is if you have a liquid called graphics card and the block is on the underside if the card's horizontal you could flip the pc and now the block is on top and you haven't got to have a riser cable you haven't got to go for a vertical gpu mount these are two good points while i'd love to be able to break the news to you about that feature of flipping the pc plus a number of other things i'll come to in a moment i know that you the lianelli enthusiast already know all this because leanne lee's been talking about this for blooming months back in february deb bauer did a development video talking about the prototype 011d eva that he had to hand hi welcome back to a new video here on my channel next to me you can see a new case from me and lee well it's new but also kind of old because it's an updated version of the o11 dynamic the case you've probably read about a million times already but this is the new o11 dynamic evil and it's crystal clear from the case he showed then to the case you're looking at here that lee and lee listened and made some changes for example the control buttons were hidden behind a door now they're in plain view and that looks like a fan hub which we didn't get in the final version and then earlier this year leann lee held a tech expo kind of thing and they showed off a number of their products including their prototype of the 011d and they talked to roman once again about progress on the case so the various features that are going to be in this chassis they were telling us all about them about nine months ago but the thing that really grinds my gears is that a week before this review nda lifted once again leann lee released a teaser video telling us all about the features of this case which is just frustrating to me then i looked around the youtube and i found two videos which appear to be taken at the same event of two guys essentially racing to see who could flip their 011d evo the fastest the answer is about five minutes a week before leanne lee's own teaser video someone else had put out videos showing these cases in action not built pcs admittedly but showing off one of the big features which is that you can flip the entire chassis over and reverse the handiness happily we have a number of other features that we can discuss this is the accessory box which comes with the evo let's see what's inside so the regular box of screws fasteners little bits and pieces and a couple of interesting little brackets which are to do with moving the power supply into the upper position because it requires a rubber support to stop it clattering around and we have some iron mongering these two brackets explain the increase in drive support from six to nine you take one of the fan mounts or radiator brackets and you simply put that hardware on there and you've now got a series of drive mounts easy as that obviously it also means that if you're putting your drives in the floor of the case you're not putting cooling down there and i think we can agree that a row of hard drives or ssds is going to block airflow fairly completely this plate also gives you support for more hard drives or ssds [Music] and it goes in the side location which you generally put some cooling in if you use that side location for storage and potentially you have storage in the floor of the case that means you've got glass here glass there which means that the roof of the case is acting as both intake and exhaust that doesn't sound good so you might think oh i'm limited in inverted commas to using the floor or the side for storage one of the accessories is a front mesh kit with that at the front the front and the roof both work for airflow so you could potentially indeed use both the side and the floor for storage while we're looking at these various mounting brackets it's worth pointing out this side bracket can be reversed so you have the option of having it like that or like that so your hardware can be inside or outside the bracket or indeed sandwiching it which can make it a lot easier to install fans and radiators before you put the whole package inside the case i've shown you the front mesh panel accessory there are four further accessories one is a top layer kit [Applause] the idea is if you want your case below your desk you want the i o on the top so you remove this panel and you replace it with this panel which has some cutouts but it's clearly the same unit on it goes and now your front io can be moved up in the back of the case so you have access from the top how do you remove that panel like so there's some cable retention going on here so let's remove that and you can see the cables have to feed through the floor and there we have the assembly so we move that up top the cables obviously connect internally and you're fine and you haven't got a hole down bottom however if you don't fancy buying that accessory and if you don't fancy having the i o in this position here there are alternatives as you can see on the bottom of the case so that is the front bottom this is the front side and this is like the getting towards the rear side like that and like that but what if you don't want to have to decide where the i o should go additional i o kit the third accessory which does not have audio because how many pcs have two sets of audio internally but does have two type a's and one type c to make the best use of these accessories you need two type c internal headers that's fairly rare you do have a number of options here for the front i o and i've never seen anything like this set up on any other case with the radiator fan racks removed from the top and bottom and the front i o panel and all the cables out of the way it's quite straightforward to flip the chassis off at the top panel and the cosmetic panel [Music] separate it from the feet put the feet on top wasn't that easy how's about we offer up a motherboard with the case flipped before we revert to the honest true and natural way of building a pc let us use this gigabyte z690 aorus master which is a high-end z690 motherboard that supports intel 12th gen i'm going to use it with a core i912 900k and also some g-skill rip jaws s5 ddr5 memory uh which has probably trebled in value since i sent this by g-skill because there's just none available right then let's dress the board and then we'll put it in the case the gigabyte thermal guard heatsink this huge great big ssd heatsink which stands that tall covers the center screws so you put the motherboard in place and then you attach the heatsink which is why at the moment i'm leaving it off so full on motherboard processor ssd memory installed it's got a hefty great big back plate i haven't installed this board in this case yet this is a genuine first go so let's see whether this plays nicely the open nature of this case means you can look through the front as i put the motherboard inside and while we're at it let's install the m.2 heatsink done maybe pick the case up this way because of course the motherboard is the wrong way up right let's do it again i think we can agree there's plenty of space inside the 011 dynamic evo with my sapphire rx 6800 xt installed you can see exactly how much space we have to work with and it is indeed loads if this floats your boat then great personally i'm going to revert to the conventional way round just like that we are used to the idea of a vertical gpu mount so there we have the bracketry with a pci express riser cable plugs into the motherboard and our graphics card can sit in approximately the same position but vertically it's for show as much as anything but sometimes it's to do with airflow around the graphics this however an upright gpu kit is something different the idea is that we have this bracket and a very long riser cable and the graphics card goes in the side location which means that it is there both of these accessories cost quite a lot of money and there are significant proportion of the cost of the case but pci express are expensive question is what do they bring to the party so we're starting with the vertical gpu bracket and in goes our graphics card the bracket can accommodate a triple slot graphics card this is a dual slot so we have a blank there and we have about by eye yay much clearance between the intake fans and the glass however it should be obvious that an air cooled graphics card in this position it's not going to get the ultimate in cooling airflow whereas when it's horizontal the airflow is absolutely terrific so this for an air cooled card not ideal for a liquid cool graphics card which doesn't have to need airflow to the graphics card itself this can work both for the visual side of things and cooling won't be a problem in the slightest we've demonstrated this many times so air cooled it could work but it's not likely to be the way to go the upright gpu kit whoops that is indeed upside down has given me problems and also drawn blood but rest assured i shan't let my personal injury sway me for my duty point to note here is the bracket uh allows you the option of installing a dual or triple slot graphics card my rx1600 actually is a dual slot i've moved it forward in the mount which would not be the correct way of doing it i've just done that so you can see it slightly better so imagine it being one slot towards that panel also the instructions are quite dense small illustrations done in mono they're not hugely helpful and it's a complicated process to install this kit you have to swap out the side cooling bracket for the storage bracket and you then install this piece of iron monger with a couple of screws you have to get the position right based on the size and length of your graphics card they give you a guide in the installation instructions but you have to do a bit of measuring and get the bracket approximately correct before you put everything together you hang your graphics card from this bracket which in turn is installed on four screws in the roof of the case which is why i've got the top panel off because you have to gain access a bit of fiddling uh small screws once it's all together it's approximately correct you will note the graphics card can move around the idea is that you install these two little brackets and they essentially clamp it in place so the position of this bracket you move it up close to your graphics card avoiding your power connectors and then one bracket goes around the back one goes from the front and you should be good the snag is that these two brackets appear to be faulty parts they have a small hole there and a small hole there for securing screws and those are supposed to be threaded and they appear to be plain so i can't put the brackets on there i cannot clamp that in place but truth be told i'm not troubled about this while the idea in principle i like in practice this riser cable just looks awful and even if you cable tie it and tidy up a bit i still don't like it uh i've seen some of work with the prototype of the evo where the pizza express riser went around the back through the power supply grommet and then it came underneath which i could imagine is doable this riser simply isn't long enough it'd have to be lengthy and psi express gen 4 risers are problematic so increasing the length it might be either impossible or difficult but certainly expensive this kit for me no it just does not work after i discovered those faulty brackets i got in contact with leanne lee they are the other side of the world from the uk so while they responded very quickly it's now the following day and they've pointed out that in the accessory pack there are two brackets to do with the anti-sag bracket for the gpu which are identical to the little right angle brackets used for the upright gpu kit so i've looked in there and indeed those brackets are correct so this is the assembled part that you would use to secure the upright gpu and these the two little rubber pads that then go in to stop your gpu from getting scratched so the hardware functions but nonetheless i'm still not that impressed by the overall setup it's a good idea but it needs some work i haven't yet taken a good close look at the optional mesh front panel it's worth noting that once you add mesh of course you can flow air so the panel comes with a pair of fan mounting brackets so with that kit installed you can add two 140s at the front or three 120s and that means that we have if my maths is correct up to eight 140 mil fans or a total of up to 13 120 mil fans i didn't stress this point previously the original 011 dynamic doesn't have a rear mounting position for a fan whereas the evo allows you to put a 120 at the rear up to eight 140 millimeter fans these twin packs of corsair ql140 rgbs are 90 pounds apiece that is 360 pounds of rgb fans starting with six corsair fans we add two more at the front behind the mesh panel and that gives a total of eight and i have to say they do look rather smart how's about we take a look at noctua chromax 120 millimeter fans 10 of i absolutely love the look of these noctua fans the polymer that they've used for the blades it's just something else and here we go turning them on that's it kit guru has gone full dank in truth not quite this is the drive cage with the two drive caddies and if you look on the sides you'll see that there are mounts for up to four 60 millimeter fans so for a laugh i asked noctua to send me a 60 mil fan and they don't do those in chromax only in brown so it's like that like that all like that all like that were you to decide to add two or even four fans to your cooling i think it might be a little bit of overkill not even sure i use it in truth but it is fun to see question is when i say full dank if you've got an rgb strip at the front of the case is it truly full dank perhaps i should disconnect it to finish off this build corsair h115i liquid cooler which is a 280 mil all in one so i'll be interested to see how well this cooler works on this motherboard and whether you can indeed adapt a relatively recent but not bang up-to-date cooler on a completely new platform then we have a seasonic focus px850 power supply 850 watts platinum so i'm going to put these inside the system and get it up and running the pc started as you can see in the bios screen i have a great many fans turning various of them are connected to splitters because there are so many fans in this case and we're good to set up the fan curves and then do some thermal testing that's my thermal testing complete and i was surprised to note that throughout the testing the noctua fans so i was running 10 of them with the mesh front panel and when i switched back to the glass and took the front fans out i was running seven noctua fans and at all times i could hear the two coarse air fans on the aio in the roof more clearly than the collection of noctua fans these chromax fans are impressive so i ran the system with the mesh front panel and the noctua fans at about half speed the 2000 rpm fans but the buyers wanted to run them at 100 rpm and i set them at 50 so 1100 rpm for the noctuas and i ran the corsair in balanced mode which was about 1600 rpm and it sounded like this and then i ramped up the fans to full speed so the noctures were at 2000 rpm and the corsair fans at 1700 rpm sounded like this after that i removed the mesh panel and switched to the glass which necessitated removing the three front fans and kept the fans at full speed so 2000 rpm and 1700 rpm [Music] then i slowed them so the noctua is at 1100 rpm and the corsair fans at 1600 rpm finally i went for ultra quiet so the noctua fans are running at 600 rpm and the corsair fans at 1300 rpm and so we get to the temperature chart this is measured temperatures not deltas the ambient has been consistent at 21 degrees celsius so i've taken advantage cpu core i9 12 900 k gpu rx 6800 xt the entire system is pulling 620 watts at the wall socket while running cinebench r23 and time spy stress test simultaneously as you can see there's very little difference when we change the fan speeds and switch from the mesh to the glass front panel one or two degrees in it with the fan slowed right down the cpu temperature rises and once it goes past 90 corsair iq drives the liquid cooler so the two fans are blacking up to full speed surging really noisily my takeaway about the cooling is that the evo is superb admittedly i was running fans in the fluorine intake fans in the siding intake and with the mesh front fans in the front in intake fans in the roof in exhaust and the rear fan also in exhaust it's crystal clear to me that this was overkill and there was no benefit to be gained from it i could have done away with at least the floor or the side fans and i'm quite sure the case would have been perfectly happy running the fans low and slow with the glass doesn't really work too well but then this is a 600 plus watt pc a proper graphics card and a proper processor so i was stressing it hard and it came through very very impressive what's my takeaway about the 011 dynamic evo well there are all sorts of little things i haven't mentioned so far because i got so wrapped up in a number of the details for example there we have the liangli der bauer badge which is self-adhesive they haven't installed it because of course you can flip this case and then if you had this already stuck in it'd be the wrong way up so they allow you to stick it on once you're happy with the orientation funny thing is that flipping feature it's very clever it probably didn't cost a lot once i'd worked out the design it's almost the least interesting thing about this case it's there if you want it it's brilliant if you don't ignore it uh it does however give me the opportunity to make a very small joke which is that the 011 dynamic evo is flipping great we've had the uk price confirmed by overclockers uk slightly curious actually it's cheaper than i thought there will apparently be an initial batch of the black cases at 125 pounds including v80 and then it will go to the full price of 140 pounds the white 133 pounds for the initial batch 150 full price also there will be a silver version coming which will be 150 pounds all day long so black if we ignore the introductory thing black 140 white 150 and then we move on to leo's pros and cons pros the good points very clever design well this video has gone on forever it's about half an hour long now i hope you agree if i haven't won you over then there's no hope for me or for you superb airflow absolutely undeniably so masses of permutations for cooling and storage yup plenty of drive mounts loads of fan mounts loads of radiator mounts cable management is straightforward the finished build actually looks really tidy particularly around the back where everything's hidden away nicely cons the bottom i o location is a bit weird if you've been watching closely you'll notice i don't actually have the front i o panel installed i didn't put it back on after i took it off to my initial strip down but that location at the bottom form i think for most people makes no sense therefore i feel it's a shame that the top i o accessory was not included in the package same actually for the front mesh uh fractal includes a front mesh panel i suspect those two accessories together would cost ten dollars at manufacturing price uh which means that if it meant at retail the cases had been 140 in the uk was 160. i don't think we'd have a problem with that and it means you don't have to faff around buying in the accessory might not require obviously the uh vertical upright graphics mounts for completely different story and fans are not included so you have to factor that into the cost as i demonstrate i was using crazy amounts of fans 360 pounds of hands and 300 pounds of fans my conclusion is that i think the 011d evo is superb indeed now i've seen it i previously liked a very few weeks ago the 011d air mini i've now forgotten all about that it's evo all the way for leo

Channel: KitGuruTech

Views: 192,810

Keywords: kitguru, video, technology, news, interviews, reviews, exclusive, kitguru membership, join kitguru, lian li, best case 2021, lian li case, Lian Li O11 Dynamic EVO, uk tech reviews, best technology reviews, kitguru exclusive, leo waldock, pc build, best pc case, lian li o11, lian li o11 dynamic, best pc cases, lian li o11 mini, lian li pc-o11, lian li o11 dynamic mini, gaming pc case, lian li dynamic, lian li o11 air mini, lian li o11 air, best gaming case, computer case

Id: gHrVVzNOKSI

Length: 32min 7sec (1927 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 17 2021