Software Control and Lighting

There may not be iCUE in the product name as with some of CORSAIR's previous fans but the AF120 RGB ELITE is best used with the company's iCUE software suite for lighting control at the very least. I also happened to have a CORSAIR Commander PRO unit that I connected the 4-pin cables of all three fans to for fan control itself. The Lighting Node CORE was also separately connected to the motherboard so you can see how both controllers work in the photos and video above. When it come to the Commander Pro, I made sure to set the fans to 4-pin mode and then it's simply a matter of choosing between the preset fan control methods or having your own custom control scheme using either PWM duty cycle (10-100%), fixed RPM, or a custom fan curve itself. As for the lighting controls, first ensure you have set up the channel to 8-LED fans—there should be an update to iCUE adding the "AF120 RGB ELITE" text in there to help avoid any confusion. Next set the number of fans to three and now you have extensive control over the individual LEDs on each fan or set them up together in a variety of static and dynamic lighting effects. You can also set up custom effects, and have sequential lighting depending on the order in which the fans were connected to the Lighting Node CORE. This does mean you do have to put some additional thought into the cable management to make sure the LEDs are in order when going from, say, the fans in the front to those in the back of a case.


Seen above are all three fans powered on and lit up so you get a better idea of what to expect from the LEDs on board. The translucent rotor helps diffuse the light quite well from the eight LEDs centrally placed on each fan and iCUE helps customize them to a greater extent than just about any other software suite I've used. If you are invested in the CORSAIR ecosystem then this can be a deciding factor towards choosing CORSAIR fans, although note that iCUE has its own share of complaints now given how bloated it is in terms of system resources taken up. Most of this is because of the sheer number of products supported but some still have issues with the user experience of iCUE that I personally am more than fine with. As mentioned on the previous page, I do wish CORSAIR would have also provided an adapter to allow the fan RGB cables to be connected to the more popular 3-pin, 5 VDC headers on motherboards and other LED controllers. On that note, I'd much rather CORSAIR simply move away from these connectors and go with the 3-pin ones across all its RGB fans and controllers too!