EK Quantum Reflection D5 distro plate for Lian-Li O11D Mini

rsquared

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 5, 2007
Messages
493
At the time of this posting there are no reviews or even photos of this plate in use around. Let me share my brief experiences with it in case someone is thinking about getting one.

I preordered this plate in the expectation to use it in my build. The plan was for a 360mm rad on the bottom and a 240mm rad on the side. The plate arrived and it did not live up to my expectations. I test-mounted it in the case and took the two photos attached. It fit fine but has issues.
  • EK's 360mm rad fits exactly on the bottom of the O11D Mini. Which is fine, but that means you need to have the ports on it at the back of the case to use it with this distro plate. That means two tubes running across the entire length of the case. Not a good look IMO. This is a huge missed opportunity for EK—they could've put bottom-facing ports on the distro plate, like the Kinetic FLT reservoir-pump units have (example), and then sold little custom fittings to bridge that small gap from plate to rad. (I envision something like Bitspower's D-plug?)
  • The D5 pump gets in the way of the side radiator mount. I still could've put the 240 there, but I would've had to put the fans for it behind the rad (between the rad and the back side panel). A bare radiator in the case is kind of ugly.
  • It's… overcomplicated? It has lots of options to accommodate various video-card layouts and such, but I don't need lots of options. Especially in the smallish space of the O11D Mini.
So yeah, I could've made it work, but I decided it wasn't worth the effort and cost. The idea of those two long-ass tubes from plate to back-ports rad is really distasteful to me. I resold it to someone who plans to do an ITX build with 280mm rads top and bottom, and only intake fans on the side mount. That should work fine. Or 240mm on top and bottom would be even easier, because the radiator-port connections on the plate do line up perfectly with the case-top and -bottom radiator mounts.

tl;dr I don't recommend this plate for use with 360mm rads, or with a rad on the side mount.
 

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