The O11 Air Mini: A Mixed Bag of Performance and Features

We weren't big fans of the O11d mini when it launched, but the updated O11 Air Mini brings several substantial changes. One notable improvement is its native support for ATX hardware, including an ATX power supply, which was not available on the original model. This means that users can now take advantage of more powerful components without having to add any additional adapters.

The new design also includes a number of other improvements, such as improved cable management and a more spacious case interior. The O11 Air Mini is still relatively compact, making it suitable for smaller spaces, but the added features make it a more appealing option for those looking for a robust build. Despite these changes, we're not entirely convinced that the O11 Air Mini is a clear winner in terms of performance.

Our testing showed that the GPU's cooling capabilities are lacking, with temperatures rising during intense gaming sessions. This was exacerbated by the fact that the case is shorter than its predecessor, which reduced airflow and made it harder to cool the GPU effectively. We recommend experimenting with side intake vents or adding additional fans to improve airflow and help keep the GPU within a safe temperature range.

On the other hand, the CPU cooling performance is excellent, often outperforming some of our test systems in certain workloads. This suggests that the O11 Air Mini's design is generally sound, but it falls short in terms of its ability to handle high-end GPUs.

One area where the O11 Air Mini excels is in its feature set. The dual-chamber design creates a spacious interior, and the ability to shift the rear panel down with smaller form factor motherboards is a clever touch. These features make the case feel luxurious, but at a price that we found too high for our taste.

In comparison to other cases on the market, the O11 Air Mini is certainly more expensive than some of its competitors. However, it's worth noting that these cases often come with a range of additional features and designs that are hard to find elsewhere. The NZXT H510 Flow, which was reviewed recently, is a good example of this. While it shares some similarities with the O11 Air Mini, it ultimately falls short in terms of design and feature set.

Ultimately, our review suggests that the O11 Air Mini is a workable case that offers many impressive features at a competitive price point. However, its performance is hampered by its poor cooling capabilities for high-end GPUs, and we recommend experimenting with additional fans or ventilation methods to improve airflow. With some tweaks to the design, including longer case legs and improved cable management, this case could be even better. For now, it's a solid option for those looking for a robust build with plenty of features, but may not be the best choice for extreme enthusiasts.

We also want to note that the O11 Air Mini has a unique feature - shearing the heads off of the screws. This is not recommended as it can lead to injuries or damage to the case and the motherboard. We recommend using regular screws instead.

It's worth mentioning that we published another review of the 110 case, which was the NZXT H510 Flow in that review, we concluded that the price for the ndxch 510 flow was too high for what it was offering. The O11 Air Mini is not a clear winner in thermal performance but there are more factors to consider and it did do well in cpu, fair.

We like the dual-chamber design of the O11 family, it's relatively small, the amount of space that it creates behind the motherboard tray is luxurious, the ability to shift the rear panel down with small form factor motherboards is clever. This is a design that we're more willing to spend $110 on as opposed to for example the NZXT H510 Flow which is a three or four year old case design that's been remade and remade two or three times now and it's just not particularly impressive and they're better alternatives if you wanted the ATX style standard size case.

The big problem we had with the H510 flow was that you can get something like a 4000 d for significantly cheaper at like $80 bucks, it's basically better in most of the aspects or equivalent in some of them like the obsession with minimalism and design so the feature set isn't anywhere close to what the O11 Air Mini here is offering.

In conclusion, we think that a lot of this has to do with the height of the legs for the case where since they've brought it down for some reason and scaled down the leg standoff height maybe to screw with the leader sizing math uh if they include that in there. But since they brought the the case down to be close to the table you lose some of the actually really close to the tail because the the um presence of the fan and radiator cages and the filter and all the stuff down there because of that there's a lot of loss of ability to get air in through the bottom of the case efficiently.

We moved the fan to the top of the case and we found that it works much better.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: entoday reviewing this stout case this is the lienly 011 air mini it has had a massive change since the original videos came out a couple weeks ago where the front panel is now different it looks about the same from there at least but the change has been in the porosity or the amount of holes per given area in the front panel and that change despite not looking too different visually has had a huge impact on thermal performance so we're gonna be benchmarking the old panel versus the new one today the old panel did not ship to customers but the new one will be and it will be soon and then we're reviewing the case as it is for everything else we normally do build quality value and thermals noise all that stuff and that again is for the o11 air mini before that this video is brought to you by squarespace we use squarespace for our own gn store and juggle complex multi-piece orders all the time with it squarespace makes it fast for us to roll out new products with detailed pages full of galleries videos and descriptors it's also useful for your own resume sites for photographer or project portfolios or for starting your new small business idea there's never been a better time to try and start your new business than right now and we can vouch that squarespace makes it easy visit squarespace.com gamersnexus to get 10 off your first purchase with squarespace so before anything else we'll talk about the mesh liam lee said that basically it had a manufacturing error where the wrong panel was made or the wrong design was made for those initial cases oops not sure how many were made but that's expensive to fix because they're replacing it now to lee lee's credit that's the right thing to do and this product would have gotten a very different result in our conclusion if liam lee didn't ever replace that panel because it had a big impact on their all performance so uh that's the difference now the case is supposed to be 110 all the other stuff that you may have seen remains mostly the same but this is the first time we've done a review on it we had started our review when lanley said probably stop because we're going to change the case and so it won't represent the final product anymore the o11 air mini basically gets rid of filters which is good dust filters if they're implemented excessively actually just make things a lot worse this case instead uses the ultrafine mesh approach that a lot of modern cases use where they just use very well fine and densely populated holes in a panel and then allow that to filter most of the dust and that avoids double stacking filters so uh this filters on the front on the top it's got some side mesh over here as well and then there is an actual filter underneath the case as for the changes on september 23rd lanley posted the following message on facebook it said after a thorough examination of the first batch of o11 air mini retail units we found the mesh panel pattern used in manufacturing to be different than the intended design the intended design which has two times the mesh density can improve cpu thermal performance by as much as five degrees celsius based on in-house testing rather than launching the case as is we've decided to completely retool new panels for the o11 air mini and regret to announce that we will have to postpone the pre-orders by another two months so first of all this is good in the sense that lanley deserves some credit for just not just pushing it out the door as is knowing that it would probably receive poor reviews in some cases knowing that uh it wasn't the best product it could be or the one that it should be we do however have our doubts with the wording of this announcement it seems that rather than being oops a mistake we made the wrong one maybe it's more of a we started doing testing and realize that the so-called intended design is actually a new design after liam lee saw its results it doesn't make much difference but we received an updated final production model for use in thermal test and we'll show you the old results too and just for a recap this originally shipped to reviewers in about september and it looks like they're going to be selling the thing and shipping it to customers probably in november let's get started with the build dissection and quality overview for this 110 case then we'll talk about thermal performance and noise this diagram from leann lee shows the old mesh design versus the new mesh design and note that the panels are painted steel so the actual hole diameter varies slightly from this there's another whole spacing diagram used as decoration on the product page for the o11 air mini originally that diagram was extremely incorrect and it's now been upgraded to only mildly incorrect which is the best kind of incorrect the diameter and pitch numbers in this before and after picture are the true ones the math is accurate but we also confirmed that the measurements line up with the actual product there are approximately 572 holes in a 5 centimeter square which with a 1.5 millimeter hole diameter equals 40.4 percent open porosity the main problem we have with the 011d mini is that it's a mid tower pretending to be a small form factor case and therefore it falls short in both categories there's an optional motherboard tray extension for atx boards but it's not sturdy and the case can't fit atx power supplies at all that's again the original not this new one the 11d mini is about 43 liters in total volume by leon lee's count for a comparison the corsair 4000d mid tower is about 47 liters while the cooler master nr200p a small form factor chassis is just over 20 liters when including its feet the dynamic mini is close in size to a standard atx pc case yet it has lackluster support for standard atx components the mini air is shaped differently and comes out to just over 44 liters but it utilizes that size effectively to have a natively atx sized motherboard tray and atx power supply support if the air mini isn't pretending to be an sff case that raises another issue a full full-size 011 error already exists and it wasn't particularly good the air mini differs from its larger relative in more ways than size though our most significant complaint with the original air design was that it was bad for airflow but also that the magnetic filters used by lanley were overly restrictive resulting in it being bad for airflow once you took them out it did okay it was fine but the mini variant here disposes of magnetic filters basically altogether the only filter in the case is a sliding nylon mesh one below the bottom intake slots while the side panels themselves are a fine metal mesh rather than the plastic covers on the normal air this is much better fit and finish is generally good on landly cases but they screwed up this time we had more issues than usual on the new unit we received with updated panels one of the top captive thumb screws was missing and two of the expansion slot cover screws were torqued down so hard that the heads of them sheared off when we attempted to loosen them these screws were over tightened in our original review sample as well but we've never had this happen it's unique we've been complaining about ndxc's screw tightness for about nine years now but they've never sent us a sheared bolt this is easily one of the most insane mistakes and quality control issues we've seen in a case barring you know fire but that's mostly because it's just unbelievably bereft of basic ability and qc hopefully leanne lee spends the next two months it has refining its production and assembly process one of the most unique features of the o11 mini models is the modular back panel the entire rear of the case can be unscrewed and shifted downwards two slots reducing the motherboard compatibility to mini itx and micro atx and reducing expansion slot count to five the benefit of doing so is that it adds an additional four centimeters of clearance above the motherboard's top edge this original mini also had a three slot mode the air partially retains the old tooling but it eliminates this mode by merging one of the modular two slot groups into the back panel assembly on both models the rear panel pieces fit together tightly and tend to get wedged when reconfiguring the case installing cards into specific slots is difficult because there's no way to get a good angle on them with a driver this is hard to describe but the bottom line is that in the 011d mini four of the expansion slots were a pain in the ass and the 011 air mini only three of the expansion slots are a pain in the ass extra ventilation has also been added to the modular slots in the mini air so this is a bit of an upside another major difference from the o11d mini and the air mini is that it swaps the hard drive and power supply base placing the hard drive bays on top and the air mini and the hard drive bay itself is simplified overall the original o11 minis sleds are the same as the full size model with metal handles and plastic rails screwed into the sides the air mini sleds are simplified presumably for cost but they also work better so that's fine the drive cage is great overall plugging in the sata connectors still takes some work but making the cage accessible through a door in the back of the case is much more convenient than sticking it under a power supply shroud as an afterthought so we liked this one strange aspect that has stuck around for every iteration of the o11 thus far is the small countersunk screw at the bottom of the cable cover the cover is otherwise easy to work with slotting in with two tabs at the bottom edge and fastened with a captive thumb screw at the top and simply undo the thumb screw as long as it doesn't shear in half pull on the cover and bend the case and then realize that you forgot to undo the tiny screw at the bottom of the cover taking the screw out is an option as is removing the cable cover altogether and relying obviously on the velcro straps underneath the cover is an unusually deep cable channel with plenty of room for any power supply cable slack longer power slides will eat this space but even the 200 millimeter maximum claimed by leanne lee would leave some space for cables above the power supply or behind the side vents if they aren't used the amount of clearance is impressive given that the non-air 11 mini can't fit atx power supplies at all unfortunately we found that the cable channel was so deep that it's difficult to reach the included velcro straps instead we found it easier to take the straps out strap the cables into one big bundle and tuck that bundle back into the case kill management is easy with cutouts above and below the motherboard despite the case's short stature and gigantic cutouts along the side of the motherboard the cutouts on the cable bar are poorly placed though because the bar although it has a different design from the 011 minis remains a problem common to both cases if the drives are mounted on the outer face of the bar the cutouts don't line up well with flat or right angle connectors we recommend sticking to the two hard drive sleds when possible since even in the best case scenario mounting drives to the cable bar makes removing the bar annoying secondly routing the cables through the cutouts below the atx motherboard is extremely difficult with the power supply installed and practically impossible if both the power supply and some bottom intake bands are installed the rim of the case prevents reaching under the power supply to guide wires through a maze of cutouts and power supply supports and finally there is only one cutout for front fan cables at the top of the case and the fan routing is limited by cable length at about 50 centimeters io is two usb 3.0 type a ports one usb 3.1 type c port and one 4-pole audio jack we advocate for separate mic and headphone jacks on the grounds that they offer more flexibility but failing that we'd like to at least get a splitter in the accessory kit the i o ports are located on the top of the case like the 011d mini rather than the front like the larger 011s optional accessories for the air mini include a vertical gpu mounting kit and radiator offset brackets the radiator brackets are simple u-shaped metal strips that allow pushing the radiator slightly further towards the side panel leaving more room for motherboard or ram clearance this is mostly useful for boards in seven slot mode as five slot mode already gives extra clearance to the top radiator mount the brackets haven't appeared on lee lee's site as of this writing and given their simplicity they should have just been packed in with the case although the stock fans in the 011 air mini are mounted to the front and rear of the case in a conventional layout the case retains its side intake vents of past 011 models out of the box these vents are covered with metal plates that can be used to mount additional ssds there's a possibility that removing these plates would encourage some passive airflow as well as incoming air moves past them so we have some thermal tests for that arrangement coming up in a moment the bottom of the case also contains a set of fan mounts but these are only two centimeters above the table surface as opposed to two and a half centimeters in the original 011 and 3.3 centimeters in the 011 xl plus a few millimeters for the fan tray this isn't a dimension that should scale with case size and liam lee's choice here is an odd one so we questioned some of the attention to detail the front fans are mounted on two separate fan trays removable trays are good but we would prefer it to be a single unit two trays means twice as many screws four total and more parts to line up when installing a radiator radiators also can only be installed on the inside surface of the tray maximum radiator supports 280 millimeters for the front the top and the bottom mounts and 240 mil for the side mount the front and top mounts are the most usable as mounting a radiator on the side or the bottom will obstruct cable cutouts but fitting a top radiator of any size is far easier in five slot mode than in seven slot mode the top does have fan rails for 121 40mm fans that extend a full 360 millimeters but the radiators of this size will not fit due to overhang installing multiple radiators of maximum size simultaneously is possible but with very little room to spare get hands-on with the case and plan carefully before you order a load of open loop hardware for this one time to start talking about some of the thermal testing we had gotten through most of our testing a couple weeks ago with the original panels before we received the word that lee and lee would be changing them for the final release unfortunately this meant we had to toss most of the results because they became irrelevant those panels won't be sold to the public but will include some of the results from a basic torture test to demonstrate the degree of improvement that was made we planned a suite of additional tests after our first set of results were lackluster for the o11 air mini but the new panels improved thermals enough that we limited ourselves to one additional test with a front intake fan moved to the bottom of the case benefiting in theory the gpu the o11 air mini is one of the only o11 family cases we've tested that comes with stock fans it actually comes with more stock fans than its larger alternative the o11 error this means that our stock tests for this case are truly stock tests unlike the 011 dynamic and the 011 xl where we were forced to add aftermarket fans for testing because they don't include any with a stock fan setup average cpu temperature was 44 degrees celsius over ambient and our full system torture test removing the front panel didn't affect this average much which indicates that it's not that obstructive but using older less ventilated panels that won't go to the public surged that average massively up to 57 degrees that's a 13 degree increase just by changing the panels so this was a good move by lee lee we ran this test multiple times both sets of panels to validate and verify and the numbers were accurate and returned multiple times the same the new panels are a huge improvement overall so that's good mileage will vary of course based on the components the coolers the software used but the five degree improvement claimed by liam lee is more than possible with a tower cooler and with at least our specific setup it ended up being even better finally moving the bottom front intake fan to the bottom of the case underneath the gpu raised the cpu average up to 52 degrees we were forced to leave the other front intake fan where it was though since there are exactly two positions available for 140 mil intake fans in the front and incrementally adjusting them up or down is not possible 44 degrees is an excellent score comparatively versus the rest of the database and that puts the air mini alongside the raven rv zero 2 and the lane cool two mesh in this category and significantly improved versus the full size to eleven air's fifty degree average there's no secret behind this result the case has a front mesh panel an intake fan directly in front of the cpu cooler and an exhaust fan directly behind it the case importantly is also short allowing air to immediately get into the components from the front the ventilated top panel should also help to prevent heat building up even without the case fans running at maximum speed during the same torture test the gpu averaged 59 degrees with a slight reduction down to 57 degrees average for the front panel removed test the result recorded using the old panels was within margin of error at 58 degrees average and we ran the torture test on the original review sample twice and the gpu averaged 59 degrees both times so we can safely say that 58 degrees as a result is just the test variance rather than a real improvement here moving the intake fan to the bottom of the case didn't help at all here with a resulting average of 60 degrees making this configuration a total bust sadly there's little clearance underneath the case so active intake from this position doesn't offer any improvement over front intake at least with our car this eliminates most of the obvious options for improving gpu thermals other than just stuffing more fans in the case we left the side plates covering the side fan mounts in place for all testing but opening these up could be a way to draw more cool air in 59 degrees places the 11 air mini surprisingly far towards the bad end of the scale room ambient for these tests is held just over 20 degrees and the gpu we use for testing limits itself to 83 degrees unless there's severe thermal runaway and we do manually control the fans but that's when you start to see heavier clock dropping so 59 degrees considering we're looking at delta t over ambient as close to as bad as it gets even the original 011 error averaged 57 degrees as always results will vary based on components but the extra wide msi twin frozen cooler on our card effectively seals off the bottom half of the chassis so larger cards will do the same thing the case legs are too short to allow much airflow passively through the bottom while the front intake fan blows directly back against the card's exhaust and can't be moved down any further with this card in this case good cooling would require a change like adding intake fans to the side mount the fire strike extreme test result confirmed the outcome of the torture test with a gpu average of 60 degrees again that's among the worst results on the charge tied with closed off cases like the bitfenix enso and cases with sparse stock fan mounts like the mesh of ic the normal 011 error scored close to its torture test results as well averaging 58 degrees this generally isn't a good result for the air mini rendering the custom gn monkey head scene and blender on the cpu resulted in an average of 36 degrees above ambient another strong cpu result for the case the 11 error averaged 39 degrees while the mini's result is closer to mesh fronted cases that we've reviewed positively like the mesh52 compact and the purebase 500dx using the gpu for rendering instead average gpu temperature was 27 degrees this is a less intense workload the cpu's not doing much and so the average is much lower but the error mini's position on the chart is still close to the original air a case that shipped with just two 120mm fans and also had issues with its front panel intake moving on to standardized fan testing in this instance the stock fan arrangement was identical to our standardized fan arrangement there's two 140mm intakes and one 120mm exhaust so replacing the lean leaf fans with a knock to a satch resulted in a slightly higher cpu temperature that was 46 degrees and that puts the 011 air mini on the same level as the 4000d airflow and the 500dx in this test the front panel is well ventilated but the stock fans are what make the air mini so exceptional on this torture test chart the standardized set of fans did improve gpu temperatures to an average of 56 degrees still that's poor compared to the rest of the chart the liam lee lancole 215 scored 54 degrees by the same company with a more favorable cpu temperature as well with the old case panels we measured a noise level of 45.6 dba but using the new more open panels dropped to that to 44.6 that's not an audible difference it doesn't really matter as an end user but it's another demonstration of the improved airflow reducing the noise level to our 36 dba threshold required reducing the case fans to 58 speed even with that reduction in fan speed cb temperatures maintained an impressively low average of 48 degrees one of the best we've seen in this test alongside the fractal torrent and the landcall 215. reducing the fan speed did the gpu performance no favors here but it didn't get much worse either capping out at 60 degrees average concluding then the 011 air mini is an improvement in both the design and the functionality uh versus the original 011 air that'd be the taller atx one that we weren't big fans of when it launched and versus the 011d mini the changes versus the 011d mini are pretty substantial this natively supports atx hardware that includes an atx power supply whereas the 011d mini did not support an atx powerslide period and the atx motherboard support required add-ons assuming this actually does sell for the 110 msrp when it launches late this year given the performance overall it's an okay buy it needs improvement we'll go over that shortly it's definitely preferable to the closed off no stock fans 11d mini which is currently going for 120 on amazon gpu thermals though were weak overall it just didn't do that well the 3d mark testing which is a gaming stand and benchmark we do didn't place the gpu in a good spot it was at the worst end of the chart so that needs some work that is contingent on the gpu design but our gpu design isn't abnormal so there needs to be an improvement there uh we think that a lot of this has to do with the height of the legs for the case where since they've brought it down for some reason and scaled down the leg standoff height maybe to screw with the leader sizing math uh if they include that in there but since they brought the the case down to be close to the table you lose some of the actually really close to the tail because the the um presence of the fan and radiator cages and the filter and all the stuff down there because of that there's a lot of loss of ability to get air in through the bottom of the case efficiently and that's proven with our task where we move the fan to the bottom of the case so getting good gpu cooling into the air mini requires some work the cpu cooling is good actually it does extremely well in some of the tests it's one of the best in some of the tests for cpu coiling but for gb we recommend experimenting with side intake vents or adding additional fans to the case as it is large air cooled gpus don't stand much of a chance in this case you'll be okay in a sense it's just you won't be at the good end of the chart it's possible that lee and lee could have helped matters with the longer case legs but that's not a change that you necessarily want to make although you could just put them each on a small block of wood and that would sort of handle that now we did just publish another review of 110 case and that was the nzxt h510 flow in that review we concluded that the price for the ndxch 510 flow was too high for what it was the o11 air mini isn't a clear winner in thermal performance but there are more factors to consider and it did do well in cpu to be fair we like the dual chamber design of the o11 family it's relatively small the amount of space that it creates behind the motherboard tray is luxurious the ability to shift the rear panel down with small form factor motherboards is clever and it's expensive for the elite to add all these small features and modularity overall this is a design that we're more willing to spend 110 on as opposed to for example the nzxt h510 flow which is a three or four year old case design that's been remade and remade two or three times now and uh it's just not particularly impressive and they're better alternatives if you wanted the atx style standard size case the big problem we had with the h510 flow was that you can get something like a 4000 d for significantly cheaper at like 80 bucks it's basically better in most of the aspects or equivalent in some of them like the obsession with minimalism and design so the feature set isn't anywhere close to what the o11 air mini here is offering and uh the h510 flow ended up just being a lazy refresh of a case by ndxt with too high of a price this case is workable we like a lot of features about it just went through the list of those gp is the biggest weak point and then the shearing the heads off of the screws that the only you probably need to stop doing that that's not cool it's risky end up with a piece of screw in the case and short something and kill the board or whatever or you just have to get a new screw which is inconvenient so that needs to be fixed but that's the biggest fit and finish issue we've ever seen out of lian lee at least in the last year or so so that's it for this one thanks for watching as always subscribe for more you can go to store.gamersnexus.net to help us out directly by grabbing things like modmats or you can go to patreon.comgamersnexus where you can get behind-the-scenes videos and we'll see you all next timetoday reviewing this stout case this is the lienly 011 air mini it has had a massive change since the original videos came out a couple weeks ago where the front panel is now different it looks about the same from there at least but the change has been in the porosity or the amount of holes per given area in the front panel and that change despite not looking too different visually has had a huge impact on thermal performance so we're gonna be benchmarking the old panel versus the new one today the old panel did not ship to customers but the new one will be and it will be soon and then we're reviewing the case as it is for everything else we normally do build quality value and thermals noise all that stuff and that again is for the o11 air mini before that this video is brought to you by squarespace we use squarespace for our own gn store and juggle complex multi-piece orders all the time with it squarespace makes it fast for us to roll out new products with detailed pages full of galleries videos and descriptors it's also useful for your own resume sites for photographer or project portfolios or for starting your new small business idea there's never been a better time to try and start your new business than right now and we can vouch that squarespace makes it easy visit squarespace.com gamersnexus to get 10 off your first purchase with squarespace so before anything else we'll talk about the mesh liam lee said that basically it had a manufacturing error where the wrong panel was made or the wrong design was made for those initial cases oops not sure how many were made but that's expensive to fix because they're replacing it now to lee lee's credit that's the right thing to do and this product would have gotten a very different result in our conclusion if liam lee didn't ever replace that panel because it had a big impact on their all performance so uh that's the difference now the case is supposed to be 110 all the other stuff that you may have seen remains mostly the same but this is the first time we've done a review on it we had started our review when lanley said probably stop because we're going to change the case and so it won't represent the final product anymore the o11 air mini basically gets rid of filters which is good dust filters if they're implemented excessively actually just make things a lot worse this case instead uses the ultrafine mesh approach that a lot of modern cases use where they just use very well fine and densely populated holes in a panel and then allow that to filter most of the dust and that avoids double stacking filters so uh this filters on the front on the top it's got some side mesh over here as well and then there is an actual filter underneath the case as for the changes on september 23rd lanley posted the following message on facebook it said after a thorough examination of the first batch of o11 air mini retail units we found the mesh panel pattern used in manufacturing to be different than the intended design the intended design which has two times the mesh density can improve cpu thermal performance by as much as five degrees celsius based on in-house testing rather than launching the case as is we've decided to completely retool new panels for the o11 air mini and regret to announce that we will have to postpone the pre-orders by another two months so first of all this is good in the sense that lanley deserves some credit for just not just pushing it out the door as is knowing that it would probably receive poor reviews in some cases knowing that uh it wasn't the best product it could be or the one that it should be we do however have our doubts with the wording of this announcement it seems that rather than being oops a mistake we made the wrong one maybe it's more of a we started doing testing and realize that the so-called intended design is actually a new design after liam lee saw its results it doesn't make much difference but we received an updated final production model for use in thermal test and we'll show you the old results too and just for a recap this originally shipped to reviewers in about september and it looks like they're going to be selling the thing and shipping it to customers probably in november let's get started with the build dissection and quality overview for this 110 case then we'll talk about thermal performance and noise this diagram from leann lee shows the old mesh design versus the new mesh design and note that the panels are painted steel so the actual hole diameter varies slightly from this there's another whole spacing diagram used as decoration on the product page for the o11 air mini originally that diagram was extremely incorrect and it's now been upgraded to only mildly incorrect which is the best kind of incorrect the diameter and pitch numbers in this before and after picture are the true ones the math is accurate but we also confirmed that the measurements line up with the actual product there are approximately 572 holes in a 5 centimeter square which with a 1.5 millimeter hole diameter equals 40.4 percent open porosity the main problem we have with the 011d mini is that it's a mid tower pretending to be a small form factor case and therefore it falls short in both categories there's an optional motherboard tray extension for atx boards but it's not sturdy and the case can't fit atx power supplies at all that's again the original not this new one the 11d mini is about 43 liters in total volume by leon lee's count for a comparison the corsair 4000d mid tower is about 47 liters while the cooler master nr200p a small form factor chassis is just over 20 liters when including its feet the dynamic mini is close in size to a standard atx pc case yet it has lackluster support for standard atx components the mini air is shaped differently and comes out to just over 44 liters but it utilizes that size effectively to have a natively atx sized motherboard tray and atx power supply support if the air mini isn't pretending to be an sff case that raises another issue a full full-size 011 error already exists and it wasn't particularly good the air mini differs from its larger relative in more ways than size though our most significant complaint with the original air design was that it was bad for airflow but also that the magnetic filters used by lanley were overly restrictive resulting in it being bad for airflow once you took them out it did okay it was fine but the mini variant here disposes of magnetic filters basically altogether the only filter in the case is a sliding nylon mesh one below the bottom intake slots while the side panels themselves are a fine metal mesh rather than the plastic covers on the normal air this is much better fit and finish is generally good on landly cases but they screwed up this time we had more issues than usual on the new unit we received with updated panels one of the top captive thumb screws was missing and two of the expansion slot cover screws were torqued down so hard that the heads of them sheared off when we attempted to loosen them these screws were over tightened in our original review sample as well but we've never had this happen it's unique we've been complaining about ndxc's screw tightness for about nine years now but they've never sent us a sheared bolt this is easily one of the most insane mistakes and quality control issues we've seen in a case barring you know fire but that's mostly because it's just unbelievably bereft of basic ability and qc hopefully leanne lee spends the next two months it has refining its production and assembly process one of the most unique features of the o11 mini models is the modular back panel the entire rear of the case can be unscrewed and shifted downwards two slots reducing the motherboard compatibility to mini itx and micro atx and reducing expansion slot count to five the benefit of doing so is that it adds an additional four centimeters of clearance above the motherboard's top edge this original mini also had a three slot mode the air partially retains the old tooling but it eliminates this mode by merging one of the modular two slot groups into the back panel assembly on both models the rear panel pieces fit together tightly and tend to get wedged when reconfiguring the case installing cards into specific slots is difficult because there's no way to get a good angle on them with a driver this is hard to describe but the bottom line is that in the 011d mini four of the expansion slots were a pain in the ass and the 011 air mini only three of the expansion slots are a pain in the ass extra ventilation has also been added to the modular slots in the mini air so this is a bit of an upside another major difference from the o11d mini and the air mini is that it swaps the hard drive and power supply base placing the hard drive bays on top and the air mini and the hard drive bay itself is simplified overall the original o11 minis sleds are the same as the full size model with metal handles and plastic rails screwed into the sides the air mini sleds are simplified presumably for cost but they also work better so that's fine the drive cage is great overall plugging in the sata connectors still takes some work but making the cage accessible through a door in the back of the case is much more convenient than sticking it under a power supply shroud as an afterthought so we liked this one strange aspect that has stuck around for every iteration of the o11 thus far is the small countersunk screw at the bottom of the cable cover the cover is otherwise easy to work with slotting in with two tabs at the bottom edge and fastened with a captive thumb screw at the top and simply undo the thumb screw as long as it doesn't shear in half pull on the cover and bend the case and then realize that you forgot to undo the tiny screw at the bottom of the cover taking the screw out is an option as is removing the cable cover altogether and relying obviously on the velcro straps underneath the cover is an unusually deep cable channel with plenty of room for any power supply cable slack longer power slides will eat this space but even the 200 millimeter maximum claimed by leanne lee would leave some space for cables above the power supply or behind the side vents if they aren't used the amount of clearance is impressive given that the non-air 11 mini can't fit atx power supplies at all unfortunately we found that the cable channel was so deep that it's difficult to reach the included velcro straps instead we found it easier to take the straps out strap the cables into one big bundle and tuck that bundle back into the case kill management is easy with cutouts above and below the motherboard despite the case's short stature and gigantic cutouts along the side of the motherboard the cutouts on the cable bar are poorly placed though because the bar although it has a different design from the 011 minis remains a problem common to both cases if the drives are mounted on the outer face of the bar the cutouts don't line up well with flat or right angle connectors we recommend sticking to the two hard drive sleds when possible since even in the best case scenario mounting drives to the cable bar makes removing the bar annoying secondly routing the cables through the cutouts below the atx motherboard is extremely difficult with the power supply installed and practically impossible if both the power supply and some bottom intake bands are installed the rim of the case prevents reaching under the power supply to guide wires through a maze of cutouts and power supply supports and finally there is only one cutout for front fan cables at the top of the case and the fan routing is limited by cable length at about 50 centimeters io is two usb 3.0 type a ports one usb 3.1 type c port and one 4-pole audio jack we advocate for separate mic and headphone jacks on the grounds that they offer more flexibility but failing that we'd like to at least get a splitter in the accessory kit the i o ports are located on the top of the case like the 011d mini rather than the front like the larger 011s optional accessories for the air mini include a vertical gpu mounting kit and radiator offset brackets the radiator brackets are simple u-shaped metal strips that allow pushing the radiator slightly further towards the side panel leaving more room for motherboard or ram clearance this is mostly useful for boards in seven slot mode as five slot mode already gives extra clearance to the top radiator mount the brackets haven't appeared on lee lee's site as of this writing and given their simplicity they should have just been packed in with the case although the stock fans in the 011 air mini are mounted to the front and rear of the case in a conventional layout the case retains its side intake vents of past 011 models out of the box these vents are covered with metal plates that can be used to mount additional ssds there's a possibility that removing these plates would encourage some passive airflow as well as incoming air moves past them so we have some thermal tests for that arrangement coming up in a moment the bottom of the case also contains a set of fan mounts but these are only two centimeters above the table surface as opposed to two and a half centimeters in the original 011 and 3.3 centimeters in the 011 xl plus a few millimeters for the fan tray this isn't a dimension that should scale with case size and liam lee's choice here is an odd one so we questioned some of the attention to detail the front fans are mounted on two separate fan trays removable trays are good but we would prefer it to be a single unit two trays means twice as many screws four total and more parts to line up when installing a radiator radiators also can only be installed on the inside surface of the tray maximum radiator supports 280 millimeters for the front the top and the bottom mounts and 240 mil for the side mount the front and top mounts are the most usable as mounting a radiator on the side or the bottom will obstruct cable cutouts but fitting a top radiator of any size is far easier in five slot mode than in seven slot mode the top does have fan rails for 121 40mm fans that extend a full 360 millimeters but the radiators of this size will not fit due to overhang installing multiple radiators of maximum size simultaneously is possible but with very little room to spare get hands-on with the case and plan carefully before you order a load of open loop hardware for this one time to start talking about some of the thermal testing we had gotten through most of our testing a couple weeks ago with the original panels before we received the word that lee and lee would be changing them for the final release unfortunately this meant we had to toss most of the results because they became irrelevant those panels won't be sold to the public but will include some of the results from a basic torture test to demonstrate the degree of improvement that was made we planned a suite of additional tests after our first set of results were lackluster for the o11 air mini but the new panels improved thermals enough that we limited ourselves to one additional test with a front intake fan moved to the bottom of the case benefiting in theory the gpu the o11 air mini is one of the only o11 family cases we've tested that comes with stock fans it actually comes with more stock fans than its larger alternative the o11 error this means that our stock tests for this case are truly stock tests unlike the 011 dynamic and the 011 xl where we were forced to add aftermarket fans for testing because they don't include any with a stock fan setup average cpu temperature was 44 degrees celsius over ambient and our full system torture test removing the front panel didn't affect this average much which indicates that it's not that obstructive but using older less ventilated panels that won't go to the public surged that average massively up to 57 degrees that's a 13 degree increase just by changing the panels so this was a good move by lee lee we ran this test multiple times both sets of panels to validate and verify and the numbers were accurate and returned multiple times the same the new panels are a huge improvement overall so that's good mileage will vary of course based on the components the coolers the software used but the five degree improvement claimed by liam lee is more than possible with a tower cooler and with at least our specific setup it ended up being even better finally moving the bottom front intake fan to the bottom of the case underneath the gpu raised the cpu average up to 52 degrees we were forced to leave the other front intake fan where it was though since there are exactly two positions available for 140 mil intake fans in the front and incrementally adjusting them up or down is not possible 44 degrees is an excellent score comparatively versus the rest of the database and that puts the air mini alongside the raven rv zero 2 and the lane cool two mesh in this category and significantly improved versus the full size to eleven air's fifty degree average there's no secret behind this result the case has a front mesh panel an intake fan directly in front of the cpu cooler and an exhaust fan directly behind it the case importantly is also short allowing air to immediately get into the components from the front the ventilated top panel should also help to prevent heat building up even without the case fans running at maximum speed during the same torture test the gpu averaged 59 degrees with a slight reduction down to 57 degrees average for the front panel removed test the result recorded using the old panels was within margin of error at 58 degrees average and we ran the torture test on the original review sample twice and the gpu averaged 59 degrees both times so we can safely say that 58 degrees as a result is just the test variance rather than a real improvement here moving the intake fan to the bottom of the case didn't help at all here with a resulting average of 60 degrees making this configuration a total bust sadly there's little clearance underneath the case so active intake from this position doesn't offer any improvement over front intake at least with our car this eliminates most of the obvious options for improving gpu thermals other than just stuffing more fans in the case we left the side plates covering the side fan mounts in place for all testing but opening these up could be a way to draw more cool air in 59 degrees places the 11 air mini surprisingly far towards the bad end of the scale room ambient for these tests is held just over 20 degrees and the gpu we use for testing limits itself to 83 degrees unless there's severe thermal runaway and we do manually control the fans but that's when you start to see heavier clock dropping so 59 degrees considering we're looking at delta t over ambient as close to as bad as it gets even the original 011 error averaged 57 degrees as always results will vary based on components but the extra wide msi twin frozen cooler on our card effectively seals off the bottom half of the chassis so larger cards will do the same thing the case legs are too short to allow much airflow passively through the bottom while the front intake fan blows directly back against the card's exhaust and can't be moved down any further with this card in this case good cooling would require a change like adding intake fans to the side mount the fire strike extreme test result confirmed the outcome of the torture test with a gpu average of 60 degrees again that's among the worst results on the charge tied with closed off cases like the bitfenix enso and cases with sparse stock fan mounts like the mesh of ic the normal 011 error scored close to its torture test results as well averaging 58 degrees this generally isn't a good result for the air mini rendering the custom gn monkey head scene and blender on the cpu resulted in an average of 36 degrees above ambient another strong cpu result for the case the 11 error averaged 39 degrees while the mini's result is closer to mesh fronted cases that we've reviewed positively like the mesh52 compact and the purebase 500dx using the gpu for rendering instead average gpu temperature was 27 degrees this is a less intense workload the cpu's not doing much and so the average is much lower but the error mini's position on the chart is still close to the original air a case that shipped with just two 120mm fans and also had issues with its front panel intake moving on to standardized fan testing in this instance the stock fan arrangement was identical to our standardized fan arrangement there's two 140mm intakes and one 120mm exhaust so replacing the lean leaf fans with a knock to a satch resulted in a slightly higher cpu temperature that was 46 degrees and that puts the 011 air mini on the same level as the 4000d airflow and the 500dx in this test the front panel is well ventilated but the stock fans are what make the air mini so exceptional on this torture test chart the standardized set of fans did improve gpu temperatures to an average of 56 degrees still that's poor compared to the rest of the chart the liam lee lancole 215 scored 54 degrees by the same company with a more favorable cpu temperature as well with the old case panels we measured a noise level of 45.6 dba but using the new more open panels dropped to that to 44.6 that's not an audible difference it doesn't really matter as an end user but it's another demonstration of the improved airflow reducing the noise level to our 36 dba threshold required reducing the case fans to 58 speed even with that reduction in fan speed cb temperatures maintained an impressively low average of 48 degrees one of the best we've seen in this test alongside the fractal torrent and the landcall 215. reducing the fan speed did the gpu performance no favors here but it didn't get much worse either capping out at 60 degrees average concluding then the 011 air mini is an improvement in both the design and the functionality uh versus the original 011 air that'd be the taller atx one that we weren't big fans of when it launched and versus the 011d mini the changes versus the 011d mini are pretty substantial this natively supports atx hardware that includes an atx power supply whereas the 011d mini did not support an atx powerslide period and the atx motherboard support required add-ons assuming this actually does sell for the 110 msrp when it launches late this year given the performance overall it's an okay buy it needs improvement we'll go over that shortly it's definitely preferable to the closed off no stock fans 11d mini which is currently going for 120 on amazon gpu thermals though were weak overall it just didn't do that well the 3d mark testing which is a gaming stand and benchmark we do didn't place the gpu in a good spot it was at the worst end of the chart so that needs some work that is contingent on the gpu design but our gpu design isn't abnormal so there needs to be an improvement there uh we think that a lot of this has to do with the height of the legs for the case where since they've brought it down for some reason and scaled down the leg standoff height maybe to screw with the leader sizing math uh if they include that in there but since they brought the the case down to be close to the table you lose some of the actually really close to the tail because the the um presence of the fan and radiator cages and the filter and all the stuff down there because of that there's a lot of loss of ability to get air in through the bottom of the case efficiently and that's proven with our task where we move the fan to the bottom of the case so getting good gpu cooling into the air mini requires some work the cpu cooling is good actually it does extremely well in some of the tests it's one of the best in some of the tests for cpu coiling but for gb we recommend experimenting with side intake vents or adding additional fans to the case as it is large air cooled gpus don't stand much of a chance in this case you'll be okay in a sense it's just you won't be at the good end of the chart it's possible that lee and lee could have helped matters with the longer case legs but that's not a change that you necessarily want to make although you could just put them each on a small block of wood and that would sort of handle that now we did just publish another review of 110 case and that was the nzxt h510 flow in that review we concluded that the price for the ndxch 510 flow was too high for what it was the o11 air mini isn't a clear winner in thermal performance but there are more factors to consider and it did do well in cpu to be fair we like the dual chamber design of the o11 family it's relatively small the amount of space that it creates behind the motherboard tray is luxurious the ability to shift the rear panel down with small form factor motherboards is clever and it's expensive for the elite to add all these small features and modularity overall this is a design that we're more willing to spend 110 on as opposed to for example the nzxt h510 flow which is a three or four year old case design that's been remade and remade two or three times now and uh it's just not particularly impressive and they're better alternatives if you wanted the atx style standard size case the big problem we had with the h510 flow was that you can get something like a 4000 d for significantly cheaper at like 80 bucks it's basically better in most of the aspects or equivalent in some of them like the obsession with minimalism and design so the feature set isn't anywhere close to what the o11 air mini here is offering and uh the h510 flow ended up just being a lazy refresh of a case by ndxt with too high of a price this case is workable we like a lot of features about it just went through the list of those gp is the biggest weak point and then the shearing the heads off of the screws that the only you probably need to stop doing that that's not cool it's risky end up with a piece of screw in the case and short something and kill the board or whatever or you just have to get a new screw which is inconvenient so that needs to be fixed but that's the biggest fit and finish issue we've ever seen out of lian lee at least in the last year or so so that's it for this one thanks for watching as always subscribe for more you can go to store.gamersnexus.net to help us out directly by grabbing things like modmats or you can go to patreon.comgamersnexus where you can get behind-the-scenes videos and we'll see you all next time\n"