Closer Examination

The fans come in a cardboard blister inlay packaging that will help protect them during shipping and handling in most cases. The cables are tucked into a lower compartment. You will notice immediately that the fan rotor is a frosted white and not translucent in color as with most if not all other LED fans. We saw this on the other Corsair RGB fans as well, and it worked out great once the LEDs were powered on. The plastic used to make this rotor is very unique and helps diffuse light very nicely. A lot of thought went into the design of these RGB fans, and it paid off.

In addition, there is a ring (loops) on the frame that houses twelve addressable RGB LEDs with another ring around the hub that houses an additional four LEDs. These have the same frosted white color, are made out of the same material, and will help diffuse light better and more uniformly relative to other Corsair RGB fans that still have discrete light hotspots (Corsair HD RGB, for instance). The fans adopt a black and white color design, which will go well with PC DIY builds to begin with, let alone after the customization available via the RGB LEDs. There are rubber pads on the corners, on both sides, that will help dampen any vibrations to/from the case. The rotor has nine blades and has been designed to cater to radiators, which also makes sense given Corsair sells liquid coolers.


There are arrows on one side of the frame to show the direction of airflow through the fan and that of the blades' rotation. The corners are closed, so it is a good thing that there are vibration-dampening pads pre-installed. However, here we can see that these pads extend outwards from the frame, and the total thickness of the fan at this point is 27.2 mm, although there is some give here. The LEDs being located on the frame and hub means the fan hub is larger in size than average, measuring in at 1.72" in diameter. The ring on the frame also takes up room, and thus, we end up with fan blades that are shorter than nearly every other 120 mm case fan today. This can hurt performance, but we will be sure to test this for ourselves.

Each fan is rated for 0.3 A (3.6 W), which is the same as for the LL140 RGB fans, although do note that the LEDs are powered separately and from the PSU (via the fan LED hub). In practice, each fan had a maximum operating current draw of 0.182 A (2.18 W). Peeling off the sticker, we can see the power distribution for the 16 LEDs and the four wires for the PWM motor. There are two fan cables per fan here, and both are unsleeved and employ the flat, ribbon-style wiring we saw before with other Corsair fans. The first is the fan's power cable for the motor that runs the fan; it is 14" long and ends in a standard 4-pin black fan header. It will attach to any 4-pin fan header on your motherboard or a fan controller capable of PWM control. The second is the LED cable that plugs into the fan LED hub, and it also is 14" long. There is a hook at the end to be able to lock it in place and also help remove it by pressing down on the hook.

The LL120 RGB fans use a hydodynamic bearing that can potentially be the optimal choice here given this is not a high-speed fan, and bearing noise will be low relative to, say, ball bearings. They are rated for a longer MTBF than sleeve bearings as well, and while I would have liked to see Corsair use their magnetic levitation bearings here, I also shudder to think of how much more such bearings would add to the price point.