Thursday, December 28th 2023
Thermalright Intros TL-M12 Series Case Fans with Infinity Reflection Elements
Thermalright today introduced the TL-M12 fan. This conventional thickness 120 mm fan is designed look good as a rear exhaust, or as part of a radiator's ventilation. Thermalright focused on aesthetic touches to the fan frame when viewed from the sides. Two of the frame's sides has an infinite-reflection ARGB LED element. The bore of the frame, and the impeller itself aren't illuminated. The fan comes in two color options—black and white (TL-M12W). It takes a 4-pin PWM input for its main function, and 3-pin addressable RGB for the lighting. The Thermalright TL-M12 features a fluid dynamic bearing. It turns at speeds of up to 1,500 RPM, pushing up to 47.6 CFM of airflow, at 1.31 mm H₂O static pressure; and with a maximum noise output of 23.2 dBA. The company didn't reveal pricing.
5 Comments on Thermalright Intros TL-M12 Series Case Fans with Infinity Reflection Elements
A quick calc says that a circle of diameter 57mm has a 30% larger area than a circle of diameter 50mm (the difference in fan impeller radius between this and a fan where there blades of the impeller get to within 3mm of the edge of the 120mm frame. That's not even the whole problem though - we're ignoring the fan hub, so it's actually this:
120mm regular fan with 40mm hub, Area = 10208-1256=8952mm^2
120mm ring-frame fan with 40mm hub, Area = 7854-1256=6598mm^2
8952/6598 is a 36% advantage for the regular fan in swept area, and that's still not even fair to the regular fan because not all swept area is equal - there's a non-linear curve for airflow from a rotor vane that favours the distance from the hub; the outer 10% of the fan blade is doing more than half of the work, and the blade near the hub serves little real purpose other than to hold the rest of the blade.
There's a reason you don't see 80mm and 92mm fans very much any more, it's because smaller fans are worse fans in every way. Higher RPM, higher noise levels, less cooling, shorter lifespan, more annoying pitch to the noise etc. We use the largest fan we can because larger fans are just better in every possible way, and these nonsensical vanity fans are ruining fans. There are plenty of ways to add RGB and bling to a fan without ruining it as an actual fan - sadly the manufacturers don't care and just want to sacrifice the actual fan to sell pretty lights to people who don't know better.
This is what maximising the fan diameter looks like, and there's loads of room for bling in the corners without compromising the actual frame and rotor size: