Lian Li O11 XL - Side distro sanity check

McBadgers & Mash · 3 Jan 2021 at 22:18

Hi guys,

So I am looking at moving my system out of the Define R6 and into an O11D XL. I am looking at going with the EK / LL Side distro plate but was wondering if anyone had put together a build with a 360 top and bottom (due to side being occupied by le plate) and if so what kind of performance were they seeing with the bottom rad / fan acting as the intake?

I was initially thinking of going with 2x EK 360 PE's using Vardar EVO RGB's (as I already have those fans handy). I may even go with an XE at the bottom but wanted to sanity check with someone who had gone down this route before hitting checkout

All the best guys and Happy New Year!!

McBadgers & Mash · 5 Jan 2021 at 21:47

Cool thanks guys,

I decided to go with the PE's but second guessing my choice now but could do a push pull from bottom rad up with top rad as exhaust. I was also toying with the notion of going against conventional builds due to the lack of front intake and using the 120 rear as an additional intake (dont judge me) to feed some cooler ambient air into the top rad while maintaining positive pressure.

Also have my XL on order here so just waiting, I think they come in on the 14th, the rest of the stuff should be here this week so I am looking forward to throwing it together, I may still swap the bottom PE out in favor of the XE like Shipsey, have time to decide I guess

I was thinking of doing something similar Doug, I have a spare 240 that will be left over so was torn between throwing that on the side panel and sticking with my trusty D5, the justification (as far as the Mrs is concerned) with me spending more money on my setup was that she likes the look of the distro and thinks I should make it look really nice... even though she is never in my game room haha

McBadgers & Mash · 5 Jan 2021 at 22:42

Ross Thomson said:
distro plate is for looks only. Go with a decent pump

hmm I was initially going to run it off the DDC pump on the distro plate, my current pump is an EK Combo D5, if the pump on the distro is garb I'm thinking twice about using the distro altogether. As its my first hard tube build that's what initially appealed to me :-/

McBadgers & Mash · 5 Jan 2021 at 22:59

Doug2507 said:
Speaking to someone the other day that fitted distro with 3.1 and said it was gash.

ah fk, having second thoughts about it now. Had not heard anything negative about them till now but was concerned about the DDC initially until someone put my mind at rest lol

McBadgers & Mash · 6 Jan 2021 at 12:50

@SHipsey Is it the same Distro plate that you went for with the 3.1 ddc, if I decide to stick with it I might buy the 3.2 pump to fit to it. That or shove another rad in and go with the D5 lol

McBadgers & Mash · 6 Jan 2021 at 15:29

ahh do you have a link to that combo?

I am about to order a Laing 3.2 pump and heatsink but may be swayed to forget the distro

McBadgers & Mash · 19 Jan 2021 at 10:56

Ross Thomson said:
distro plate is for looks only. Go with a decent pump

Went with your advice and switched the Distro for the FLT 360, I have a PE 360 for the top and an XE 360 for the bottom but thinking of exchanging the XE for a second PE purely as it will look tidier. I think with 2x PE 360's I will get just over 1000w of cooling and my setup requires around 760w of cooling. Do you think its worth just sticking with the XE for the additional headroom for the future?

McBadgers & Mash · 20 Jan 2021 at 13:08

Mike_J_Smith said:
Aren't the new EKWB side distros going to be the 3.2 pump? That's what is on their website (although oos at the moment). I read somewhere that the 3.2 was a good upgrade over the 3.1? (I have no experience with watercooling though, just planning a build in the next few months)

If you order direct from EKWB you will get the 3.2, anywhere else they come bundled with the 3.1, I had actually bought one and a 3.2 with heatsink to go on it but decided to go for the FLT 360 with the d5 as they are more reliable than DDC. Another thing is doing a build with the distro plate limits you somewhat and most builds look identical which I didn't want.

Using the FLT or a normal pump / res you still have a bit of freedom with your tube runs, the Distro is designed to make it easy by lining everything up and having to create only minimum bends which is handy. After reading some of the reviews I have seen though I would not risk my components. I cant knock DDC pumps as I have never used them but my current D5 has been used 24/7 for the last 4.5 years and has never skipped a beat, hearing pumps fail after a couple of weeks was enough for me to stick with what I know and trust

McBadgers & Mash · 26 Jan 2021 at 01:55

Trunkey said:
I'm also pondering moving into this case but not because of the distro plate but because I want 3 x 360mm rads, I currently run two very slim 16fpi magicool rads on the 6950x Titan Sli rig, its fairly quiet and after hours gaming or benching it settles with the everything at around 63c, I guess that equilibrium? Sat typing this we are at 33c with the CPU pegged at 4.2Ghz and 1.25volts
I will just mount a cylindrical res in front of the side rad, I will probably recycle one of the magicool rads into the roof with two 45mm alphacool rads in the side and base, if possible the two gfx cards will be mounted vertically so as you can see the fluid in one of the blocks.
Did I not see elsewhere that you can mount a D5 pump into that distro plate as a direct replacement for the dcm?
I don't need to do any of this but I just fancy messing about with my kit.

I just finished up building, its a really nice case to work with and I am glad I didn't go for the Distro plate now. you can only mount a DDC on the distro plate G1 but the front plates comes with a D5 I think. I went with 2x EK PE 360's which are performing really well, after a couple of hours playing on NoPixel my GPU maxed at around 43 and my CPU peaked at 52 currently water temp is 8 over ambient but I should have checked when I finished gaming which was an hour or so ago

McBadgers & Mash · 2 Feb 2021 at 13:59

I have seen a couple of the other EK partner card blocks and have to agree with you there mate

McBadgers & Mash · 2 Feb 2021 at 17:10

Finished up but had not posted pics, here is a couple if anyone wanted to see. Only thing I am going to do is redo the CPU out to top RAD in pipe with the 3rd 90 degree bend to get rid of the extender and Torque 90 adapter, I think tube straight to fitting just looks a little cleaner.

Also going to add a 7" sensor panel to the rear fan slot and I am pretty much done then

Thanks for the advice guys, I am pretty happy with the end result.

McBadgers & Mash · 6 Feb 2021 at 20:10

I got bored and Ordered a screen so I could do a sensor panel, managed to get some FFC cables and fed the power out of the back to hide cables

Need to tidy up power cables which I might do tonight, not to everyones taste but I am really happy with it

(I am also the worst photography ever!)