Introduction

It's been a while since I last tested fans—in fact, nearly a year ago owing to a move across oceans that seemingly took forever. I am still setting up my full system for fan reviews, including a long overdue audio measurement, but CORSAIR decided it waits for no man and marches on relentlessly with a fervent pace of product releases this month. Today, we take a look at their latest addition to the popular SP series of airflow-optimized fans, and thanks again to CORSAIR for sending review samples to TechPowerUP!


The CORSAIR iCUE SP RGB ELITE fans come in both 120 and 140 mm size offerings, and CORSAIR sent over both for me to check out. The performance section of this review will stick to only the 120 mm fans to fit in with the rest of the test database, but given these fans are probably all about looks over performance, it made sense to showcase them together. These are the same fans that shipped with some of their cases recently, and there has clearly been enough demand from customers about buying replacement fans for there to now finally be a retail solution for purchase. The SP RGB PRO fans are nearly identical in having the same eight addressable RGB LEDs per fan, but these are 3-pin voltage-controlled fans that are even more airflow-optimized. It may seem unfair that we are going to test these as radiator fans for watercooling, but it was that or nothing, so let's forge ahead with that caveat in mind by starting with a look at the specifications for both fans in the tables below.

Specifications