Closer Examination

The Corsair iCUE Link RX120 RGB fans will come with a protective plastic sticker on the front and back hub for you to peel off as desired. These come in all white or the black version I have here with a black plastic frame and a frosted white impeller for RGB lighting. The fan is 120 x 120 x 25 mm in thickness, although two of the sides have the iCUE Link connector slots on them and the other two also jut out slightly thanks to pre-installed plastic decorative plates which are curved. One is black, and the other has Corsair on it for extra branding if you are a fanboy. These can be removed easily and swapped around too, although keeping the slot empty looks somewhat weird if you are going to be installing the fans from the side. The impeller has seven blades designed with static pressure optimization in mind and the frame has arrows to help indicate the direction of blade rotation and that of the air going through the fan. There are tiny circular rubber pads on the closed corners to help dampen vibrations from the case to the fans when installed via screws.


From the back we see the nine curved stator vanes—as opposed to the usual four in a more straight design—that help make up Corsair's AirGuide technology, which aims to have airflow be a focused field going through the fans as opposed to spreading out in a cone shape immediately. These stator vanes do this by helping minimize Eddy currents and vortexes in the airflow field through the fans. There's another Corsair sticker on the back as with the front, including with the Corsair "triangles" used copiously. The fan specs are placed on the side as opposed to the back of the hub thus, and this is how we find out the iCUE Link RX120 RGB is rated for a max current draw of 0.66 A (including startup boost) and that in turn means ~8 W per fan if you go with these fans at full blast. Running the fans at slower speeds will of course consume less current off the 12 V DC rail. There is no thermal sensor on these fans as on the QX120 RGB fans, although the same magnetic dome bearing shows up here too. This is a relatively new bearing that has the shaft spinning over the support with minimal friction—it's not a magnetic levitation bearing where you have an air blanket between the two, in case you were wondering.


On the sides where the fans connect together are what Corsair calls active and passive bridges with associated active and passive bridge connectors. The active connections happen where the fans have the iCUE Link active port and the other side is passive to be used to stabilize the physical mating of the fans. There are also magnets helping align the fans together so you know how these go together even before the connectors come into play. Since the two bridge connectors are removable, you can easily stack up the fans as you deem fit. It also allows you to have fans placed individually using the cables provided, as opposed to being part of a fan group on a radiator. Once you have set up the fans together, connect the lead fan to the system hub via the provided, or your own, iCUE Link cable. This means you can have two groups of fans connected to the same system hub or get a signal splitter if you wish to have more such groups connected. The system hub then has its own set of cables for power and data as seen above. Be aware that you can't hot-plug new fans in or out of groups; you will need to do this when the system is off.