Disappointed with my build

So I bought the Lian-Li O-11 Dynamic case purely based on the Gamers Nexus review where it seemed to be a kick-ass case which is both cool and looks cool, also I wanted to try this RGB stuff once in my life.

Unfortunately cool wasn't the case (pun intended) and it's also quite loud when I crank up the fans to try to lower the temps. I've got one Corsair H100i AIO Platinum SE (two fans) and four Corsair LL120 fans so six in total. GN said that they got the best GPU performance by having three intake fans on the side but for me it was really bad with temps rising to 77C and beyond without OC (my point of reference is my old Define S case where the GPU maxed out a 71 degrees with OC).

Now I have three fans in the bottom as intake, one plus the AIO at the top as exhaust which somewhat works but yesterday when I was playing SotTR and my OC GPU usage was around 80-85%, things started getting hot 72C and rising. I had to push all case fans to 45% which is really loud, the GPU fan to 65% which is also very loud and the AIO to 1500RPM which is around 60%.

I guess I have four choices:
1. Try setting the AIO as intake on the side and also move the top fan as intake on the side (bottom slot)
2. Sell the case, AIO, fans and go back to my old Define S and buy a good tower cooler for my 3800X
3. Sell the case & fans and buy the BeQuiet Silent Base 801
4. Keep everything but stop OCing the GPU

Any advice?

 

Sorry to hear you got troubles with the temps my friend.

I guess the smartest thing to do, although lots of work probably, is to indeed make the AIO your intake, and maybe another fan too that's not behind a rad, and the rest outlets in the back / top.
Which ones are the louder fans, AIO or GPU or case? This way you can maybe get a better impression on what you should have fed the "coolest" air. Which probably means putting the AIO as intake, but that's just my guess.

 

I think personally I’d just experiment a bit with fan placement, bottom intake has never worked well for me as the GPU just blocks all the airflow.

I’d leave the AIO in the top as exhaust, move the single fan from the top to the rear of the case again as exhaust and then try the bottom three fans as intake in that front side area and see how that works.

 

Yea it sucks and was very expensive, but the positive thing is that I learned stuff

It's not too much trouble to move the AIO to the top side of the case as well as one fan so I'll try that.
The LL120s at max is unbearable. At 30% (700RPM) I don't hear them that much and while gaming I can increase them to 40% (1000RPM) but after that it's too loud. The GPU gets loud after 60% RPM so that's where the headroom stops. I must say the LL120 fans work best on the AIO but the CPU temps is not really an issue. The only "problem" is that the AIO gets fed with hot air from the GPU.

Note that this case only has the following fan placements:
3 x 120mm top
3 x 120mm side
3 x 120mm bottom

(meaning no fan placement on the back of the case like most cases have).

I'll try fiddle around with fan placements like you said. At first I though that I would buy one more two more LL120s for the side of the case plus a Corsair Commander Pro (since I would have six fans and only got four headers on the mobo) but thats another €160 and I really don't want to invest more money on this computer.

 

Ah I see, I’m actually wondering if keeping your fans as they are and mounting the GPU vertically might be the better option, although clearance between the glass and GPU might just make it worse so maybe not.

I’m running an ASUS ROG Strix OC 2080Ti in the pc I use on my TV and that happily sits at around 65 to 70c overclocked to around 2070MHz in an NZXT Phantom 630 with...

X2 120mm intake fans in the front,
X3 120mm fans in the top as exhaust,
X1 140mm fan in the rear as exhaust.

Having more exhaust vs intake does seem to work well in that system.

 

Oh yea, I forgot to write that I installed the GPU support bracket, maybe that doesn't fly too well in my case so I'll remove it.

Unfortunately I've read that you cannot buy a vertical mount and have bottom fans on the same time. In that case I would have to move all bottom fans to the side and keep the AIO as it is. Clearance is suppose to be absolutely amazing and the reason for this is that you completely uninstall the expansion slots and replace them with a vertical mount slot, that's why you don't see the vertical mount placement now. But I think I'll just start with moving the AIO + 1xFan to the side and see what happens. A vertical mount costs 67€ so I prefer to try something that's free first.

Are you running some kind of fan profile? Man, I wish I had those clocks. Unfortunately I've got a really poor chip and nowadays it doesn't even do more than 1995MHz below 70C and I need to get to 60C for it to do 2010MHz. Btw, if you've got negative pressure in your case you probably have a lot of dust, no?

 

radiators are cooler when you're pulling the air through them, rather than pushing.

 

that does look good my friend!...Im jelly ....

you're going to have a lot of heat with that setup...I'm sure you'll figure it out.

 

I recall that even in Steve's review he mentions that this case is really just meant for custom loop water cooling. An AIO and an air cooled card needs really good airflow, where as in an open loop, mounting options and space is usually more important.
If you like the case, if it's not too late try to trade in for the Lian-Li O11 AIR. Pretty much the exact same case but with an open front with real airflow for intake. GN also has a review of this (which was able to chart top with the filter taken out, and was tied with the rest of the airflow focused cases with the filter in).

 

Hi there

Sorry to hear you have problems with temperatures

This Lian-Li O-11 Dynamic looks awesome and on paper I would say should have nice airflow and with that great temperatures, I recently used this case on friend request and if I would use this case again, no way, temperatures are all over the place, CPU temperatures in mid 80's in gaming and on GPU we are seen from mid 50's to low 60's that's with 2*360mm radiators, friend used like you are using LL120 fans which I replaced for cheap Arctic Cooling P12 PWM, with LL120 I needed to run at least 1400RPM to have reasonable temperatures, on other hand with P12 I could run fans in 1000-1200RPM with lot less noise, temperatures still are not the best but better by 6-8°C on CPU and on GPU we are improved temperatures by 3-5°C as max but I recommended my friend get rather Air version of Lian-Li O-11 than Dynamic with which he should have better temperatures but again I would only guessing on that

LL120 fans are just poor fans there, I would ditch them and replace them for something better

This case is designed more for water cooling crowd than for people with AIO, but still I wouldn't get this case personally

Air in theory can be better than Dynamic but literally I can guess on that because I never tried or used this case

BeQuiet cases are nice looking cases just they don't have best airflow, friend modified top and front panel because of poor airflow and temperatures but he is run in this case 360mm and 280mm radiator

Bottom fans personally worked for me on several cases and personally I use bottom fans as intake if its possible with aftermarket GPU coolers, removing unused PCIe slot covers can also help with better temperatures, this I do on every build, I remove all unused PCIe slot covers and test temperatures

But like with any cooling (water or air) everything depends on ambient temperatures

Good air cooler something like is NH-D15 and many others like is BeQuiet Dark Rock or Thermalright Le Grand Macho RT should do nice job on 3800x or 3900X in right case

I personally like old Silverstone Temjin series TJ07 or TJ11 or Raven series as well are pretty great airflow cases, owned TJ11 and TJ07 and liked both cases there

Hope this helps

Thanks, Jura

 

Thanks for the support dude Appreciate it.

You are right but there are two things about the Air that I don't like:
1. It's not available in White in my country and my build is based on that color (fans and AIO are white)
2. I've read in several places that the dust filter is too restrictive. On the other hand, that's unfortunately true with the Dynamic filters as well

Hey Jura,

You might be right about the LL120 fans and as always, that's a complete lottery since you never know what fans will work well with a case and it's specific dust filter. Thing is that if I check PC Part Picker, then tons of people use these fans in their O11 Dynamic builds but perhaps only for their appearance and not so much for their performance? I thought about buying a Corsair AF120 fans just to see the difference. I'll have to stick with one LED color though but I guess that's life

Yes, maybe I took the wrong decision (again) with the case and should have gone for the Air, but like I told Cyberdyne, the dust filter isn't great.

I upgraded a friends computer with the 3700X and a Dark Rock 4 Pro in a Define R6 and it worked great. The CPU maxed out at around 65 degrees with the CPU-Z stress test (that was just a very quicck 1 minute test).

Since you say BeQuiet isn't that great I think I would simply go back to my old Define S which I know works really well. I would perhaps change the AF140 fans to newer ones since they've been in that case for a few years. My ideal case would be sound dampened front with big inlets on the sides and bottom with an air filter that isn't too dense. Three 140mm intakes in the front, one 140mm intake at the bottom, three 140mm exhaust at the top and one 140mm in the back. Low RPM fans that I only spin up while playing demanding games.

Do ambient temps really do that much?

 

Ambient temperature does have an effect. Since that's the air you're using to cool off your components. That being said, I doubt that's the bottleneck in the chain for you, unless it's like 28 C or something.

 

Interesting thing I noticed yesterday. I was playing SotTR and at times the GPU load goes up to 97%, that's when things get really hot. I was running my fans at my tolerated max which is 40% on all case fans (around 1000RPM), GPU at 60% and CPU at around 1300RPM. I know the numbers may not mean much but it's loud though bearable. This was in the evening and the GPU temps rose to 75C which for me is pretty much since I'm used to 71-72 max at somewhat lower RPM.

I opened the side of the case just to feel where it's hot and noticed that it's the side of the card (and top) which is really hot. Cool air is indeed blowing from the bottom three fans. It's not that warm around the CPU area. And that's where it got interesting since opening the side of the case only dropped the GPU temp by 1 degree.

I'll still try two fan configs this weekend:
2x bottom (in), AIO top (out), 2x side (in)
2x bottom (in), AIO on side (in), 2x top (out)

I prefer not to buy more fans since I would have to buy the Commander Pro also both to control the fans but also to control the RGB.

Good news is that I can return the case, AIO and fans if I so wish and go for my old case plus buy a Dark Rock 4 Pro for the CPU, so that's comforting.

 

I mean, this might be a stupid question, but what is that thing underneath your GPU mate? Is it a bracket to keep it up, or an SSD drive? Maybe it's blocking the cool airflow, so the GPU doesn't get enough air to dissipate the heat?

 

It's a GPU support bracket I got rid of it yesterday and sure, it helped a little but not much.

 

Those fans aren't too good performance wise.

I know you wanted RGB but something like noctua NF-A12 would be much quieter and much better performing.

24.8dBA at 1500 RPM for the corsair, 22.6 @ 2000 RPM for the noctua.
Noctua at 1500 RPM would be around 15/6 dBA

I would also repaste the GPU if it bothers you, but 70c~ isn't anything to worry about.

 

could always add the phanteks Halos to the noctuas, this is how i got around it.

 

I did just that:
2 x bottom in
2 x side in
2 x top (AIO) out

Temps down by 4 degrees (also due to slightly lower ambient temps) and case/GPU fans on lower RPM. I'm happy but I'm also wondering what would happen if I added one more fan on the bottom and one more on the side, or what would happen if I put the AIO as intake on the side instead. It does get slightly hot under heavy load which of course is rare during gaming.

I'll get the Dark Rock 4 Pro, some Notcuas and put everything in my old case. I've had enough of this!

You are right but since they are so ugly I would rather return everything and buy 140mm Noctuas and use my Define S instead.
I did however find Fractal Design Dynamic X2 GP-12 White, which really are completely white so I've ordered three for testing purposes.

Good point but there are two problems here, one is the price (one Halo costs as much as one Noctua fan) and the second problem is that the Mystic Light software is a pretty big disappointment. General functions and the vast amount of light patterns is great but the big letdown is that the AntiCheat, Punkbuster and other similar software thinks it's spyware so any game using anti-cheat cannot be played. Mystic Light uses something called LEDkeeper.exe and you cannot close the task since it immediately restarts. This means that you have to close the whole Mystic Light suite (three tasks in total) but then you cannot start the program even if you restart the computer. The only solution is to uninstall and reinstall the software which of course is ridiculous for just playing a game.

Not sure how others have solved it but I gave up and used iCUE for fans + AIO and left the mobo, RAM and CPU in their default setting which is some kind of rainbow thing.

 

after applying mystic light settings on my board, the colour i set retained even after a windows install, no mystic light or led keeper in sight?

you could also consider this:

https://github.com/ixjf/MSIRGB

 

That's interesting. I actually hoped the light settings would be saved in the hardware, looks like that happened with your build.