When CORSAIR originally launched the AF120 ELITE last year, I saw it and then realized they would have reached out to me for a review had they been confident about its performance in my testing regime. It was a few weeks later but then this is exactly what happened. I owe CORSAIR an apology for the time taken to get this review out thus, but I do see where the engineering team's motivation was in making sure the marketing department shipped out a review sample (or three). This is one of the first products coming out of a new team at CORSAIR in charge of thermal engineering and cooling and it has the potential to be one of the very best fans on the market—just not necessarily for PC DIY water cooling.

The AF120 ELITE uses CORSAIR's AirGuide technology with a relatively unique stator vane setup we saw on the accompanying SP120 RGB ELITE fans too, and this helps make for a concentrated airflow field leaving the fan that doesn't immediately spread out and lose momentum. Given the performance on my radiator which itself is about average in airflow restriction among other radiators as well as a few quick tests done in a less-than-scientific manner, I am inclined to say this is going to be an excellent case fan for airflow inside the PC chassis itself. It handles lower airflow restriction regimes far better than higher ones such as radiators, so it can do wonders with a well-designed case that doesn't have a filter or front panel to choke inlet airflow. Also, given some of you can't resist yourselves, the AF120 ELITE is not a Gentle Typhoon clone with the title meant to be more tongue in cheek given this actually outperforms the GT as a radiator fan from a performance/noise basis. Fans have been continually improving over the last decade since the GT was originally discontinued before being brought back in various forms, so it should not be a surprise to see many modern fans do better.

The trouble is I test fans on radiators given this was originally part of the watercooling review category, and here there are plenty of other modern fans that easily outperform the AF120 ELITE in the same metric. The older CORSAIR ML120 is another option too and it continues to be sold, albeit I don't know if the newer version with more RGB LEDs than the one I originally tested performs the same. For an asking price of $25 per fan, you will have to decide whether or not these are worth the price of admission as case fans given I can certainly recommend other fans that offer better value for money for those looking purely for radiator fans.