Lian Li PC-O11 Dynamic Chassis Review: Affordable Luxury

Hardware Installation & Test Configuration

Accessories for the PC-O11 Dynamic are located in a small box secured in the open 3.5" hard drive bays. The box contains the usual collection: various screws, Velcro cable straps, and an owners manual and installation guide.

Although Lian Li claims this case supports up to EATX motherboards, the reality of the situation is that since true EATX motherboard measure 13” deep by 12” tall, there are not enough standoffs to install a motherboard of that size. In fact, the motherboard tray in the PC-O11 Dynamic is designed in such a way that attempting to use a full EATX motherboard would leave over three inches of your motherboard unsupported.

With that out of the way, the inside of this chassis is absolutely cavernous. The dual-chamber design allows users to move components hard drives, power supplies, radiators and all-in-one coolers into the rear chamber, freeing up the entire main compartment for your system build.

This chassis features eight expansion slots and can accommodate multi-GPU set-ups up to 420mm in length and 150mm wide. Lian Li also offers--at an additional cost--an optional rear panel that allows you to vertically mount a dual-slot GPU.

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You'll find four trapezoid-shaped cable pass-through holes with rubber grommets in the motherboard tray for cable management. Additionally, two small holes with rolled-metal edges sit at the base of the motherboard tray, and there's another for passing through the 12v motherboard power cable as well. You'll also find a large hole in the motherboard mounting plate, behind the CPU socket area, to facilitate heatsink changes without removing the motherboard. This chassis can be outfitted with CPU coolers up to 155mm and graphics cards up to 420mm.

As far as storage options go, the PC-O11 Dynamic can accommodate up to three 3.5" hard drives and a total of six 2.5" hard drives or SSDs. Two of the 2.5" drive-mounting locations can be found in the bottom of the main compartment. In the secondary compartment, there is a removable hard drive rack with two metal drive trays that can house two 3.5" and/or two 2.5" hard drives. Finally, there are mounting locations for two 2.5" SSDs or one SSD and one 3.5" drive on the cable management bar. For a cleaner look, builders can forego using the 2.5" mounting locations in the floor of the main compartment in favor of mounting all the storage devices in the secondary compartment.

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Power supplies up to 210mm long can be installed in the secondary compartment behind the motherboard tray. The bottom slot can accommodate PSUs up to 210mm and--with the cable management bar in place--up 170mm in length in the top PUS slot. Removing the cable management bar allows for dual 210mm PSUs, but that comes at the expense of losing two hard drive mounting locations. Lian Li told us at CES 2018 that one of the main reasons the case is designed for two power supplies is that a pair of mid-wattage PSUs often costs less than one high-end, high-wattage PSU. While that's certainly true, we suspect the percentage of people buying this case and installing a pair of power supplies will be fairly low.

Cooling

When it comes to cooling, we were a bit disappointed to discover that the PC-O11 Dynamic doesn't ship with any fans from the factory. Obviously, this can be remedied by the end user, but it would have been nice to see at least one fan included with the case. In total, this chassis can be equipped with up to nine 120mm spinners, or a combination of two 140mm and six 120mm fans.

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All-in-one coolers and radiators up to 360mm can be installed in the top, side and bottom of the chassis. When adding an all-in-one cooler or radiator in the side mounting location, the radiator can be installed (with fans) in the in the primary compartment or, for a cleaner look or to make room for other components, the fans can be mounted in the main chamber with the radiator in the secondary chamber.  

Test Configuration

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