ANTONY LEATHER’S
Customised PC
Case mods, tools, techniques, water-cooling gear
and everything to do with PC modding
MODDING / OPINION
E
very now and then we
undertake a Dream PC build
of our own (see p74), which
means I get to play with some new
toys. This time, the highlight for me was
a case I’d been itching to get my hands
on for a while. Rather than using a case
that offers good air cooling out of the
box, this time I decided to go for a blank
slate and use Lian Li’s O11D Mini.
I chose this case for a couple of
reasons. Firstly, it is indeed a blank
slate, so you can kit out the case with
your own fans and other hardware –
that’s exactly what you want if you’re
splashing some serious cash and want
to cherry-pick all your hardware.
The case also looks great, of course,
and has plenty of glass panels to
show off the hardware inside. This
chassis has also been a favourite
among water-cooling hardware
manufacturers, and there are huge
distro plates available for it that
combine pumps
and reservoirs and
look fantastic. There’s
plenty of room for other
water-cooling hardware too.
It’s an incredibly popular case
for these reasons, and the interior
throws up other surprises too. Despite
technically being thought of as a mini-
ITX case, there’s space and installation
mounts inside for ATX motherboards
too. If you sticking with mini-ITX,
though, you reap the rewards of having
a more flexible, spacious interior.
Besides, seeing as typical gamingPCs only have a single PCI-E card, two
sticks of RAM and a few storage drives,
we’ve decided to go mini too.
There’s something for everyone
in our feature this month, as we’ve
included water cooling, glass etching
and other modding techniques in the
mix, with a full guide on how to spray-Can’t buy a GPU?
Have a go at modding
Lian Li’s O11D Mini
gives you a fun and
affordable blank
slate for under £100