Driver and Lighting

When you first power on the fan LEDs, they light up in the random test pattern seen above. This is a randomized demo mode that only serves as proof that the LEDs work, and the fans will continue to light up without any syncing unless you plug in the LED hub and Lighting Node PRO and install/run the driver.


Corsair provides software control over lighting for their LL RGB fans via their Corsair LINK driver, and you can find the installer on Corsair's downloads page here. The latest public release at the time of testing, version 4.9.0.57, was used for this review. The installer takes up 40 MB of space, and the final install requires 101 MB. Installation is straightforward in that you get the standard terms of service and the option to choose the install path. You are prompted to agree to install some drivers for AIOs, but those do not affect the fans and their controls either way.


You are forced to reboot the system post installation, which I was not a fan of, but you are at least given the option to choose when to do so as long as you realize that you won't be able to do anything with the driver until then. Once done, the home screen opens up with a lot of options pertaining to your specific system, but what we are interested in here is the Lighting Node PRO window.

In the video above, I have two LL RGB fans connected, and Corsair Link detected the channel as an LED strip by default. I updated the firmware on the Lighting Node PRO and made sure the driver was the latest at the time as well, followed by configuring the relevant section so it knows these are "RGB LL" fans as specified in the drop-down list. If you have more than a fan connected to the fan LED hub, make sure they are connected in order from 1 through 6 to its marked ports. Even so, it will only be the first fan that gets recognized and lit up, and you have to manually add the other fan(s) yourself, which feels unnecessary. Once done, the "Fan#" changes from 1-1 to 1-x, where x is the number of fans you have (two in my case here). The video also goes through the available lighting modes, of which there are plenty, and there are even three more unique modes for the LL RGB fans at the bottom. In addition, there is a global brightness slider at the top with four steps, and the specific modes have specific options to choose from as well. By default, "Apply" only affects the fan clicked on in the menu, so you have to copy the effect to the other fans manually, which can be annoying, but also offers you the ability to selectively have different fans on different modes if you so prefer.


Here is the entire list of lighting modes available on Corsair Link for the various RGB fans they make, and we see that the LL RGB fans are the blingiest of them all. Note that in the time since this review started, Corsair has also released the ML RGB fans, and those are similar to the SP RGB fans in terms of which lighting options are available.


As with any product with RGB lighting, I set everything to white to see how true to color it is. The Corsair LL RGB fans do a very good job here, and part of this is due to their frosted rotors, with the white color being as good as any RGB device I have here.

Lighting is by far the biggest feature with these fans, and so if you want more, you get more. The available options are great, but I still don't know why Corsair LINK continues to be used when Corsair Utility Engine does a better job with lighting control on peripherals. Having to manually add individual fans is one thing, but having to manually copy over effects to all the fans in the series each time just gets monotonous when trying out different things. I imagine the two drivers will eventually be merged, so I want to see that happen sooner rather than later. The use of the two ring loops here does create more options, and addressable LEDs help here more so than on nearly every other RGB fan. The diffused lighting also creates a better, softer light. Another thing to note here is that the LEDs are facing towards the front and not the sides, so the light is directed upwards towards you and not the rotor, which also adds to the perceived brightness here. There is some functional benefit possible as well since you can have the fans change color depending on component temperatures or fan-speed profiles should you want there to be more to the lighting than just the bling.