Closer Examination

As with a lot of such daisy-chain enabled fans, the Lian Li UNI FAN SL 120 Wireless presents a clean aesthetic with no cables or wires seen from the side. The fans come in black or white to better match your build, although the white version will probably look more cohesive with the frosted white plastic sections in the frame used to diffuse the RGB lighting integrated in these fans. Note that the fans measure in at 124.5 x 120 x 28 mm, making them take slightly more room than standard 25 mm fans. Some of this is from the corner sticking out with them seemingly sealed on both sides by silicone rubber anti-vibration pads, but Lian Li has cleverly added small windows, if you will, that can be removed from the larger pads to access the screw holes easily. These are also spaced such that the fans are now compatible with any screws intended for 25 mm thick fans in general, and then you can place these back for a cleaner look when installed. The fans are made of PBT plastic and the rotor has seven highly curved blades that seem optimized for a hybrid use of static pressure and airflow. The front hub has a Lian Li logo sticker, and we see a few shiny elements strewn around the edges too.


Two opposing sides are used to daisy-chain the fans with interlocking plastic "keys" and pins that fit into the open locks on the other end—simply align the mating sides of two fans and slot one into the other from the top or bottom. Then simply repeat the process, with Lian Li currently suggesting a single chain of three fans, although I would like to see official testing and recommendations for up to four per side to allow compatibility with even quad 120 mm radiators. If you are a proponent of push-pull fan configurations on radiators, it's best to treat the two sides separately. The interlocking plastic keys can be rotated and removed on the fan not using them, which frees up room past the fan frame and avoids interference with radiator ports or case panels. Looking at the back side, there is another metallic sticker on the hub as opposed to finding 3rd-party tested power/current draw numbers here. Lian Li is rating the UNI FAN SL 120 Wireless for up to 1.8 W of input power, which means you should be able to power 3–4 fans off a standard 1 A header no problem—the three samples here certainly had no issues. Each fan uses an undisclosed fluid dynamic bearing, and I did not get any further information about the motor or bearing. Perhaps the product page, when live, will shed more light, but I think it would be fair to assume these won't be that different from the previous generation UNI FAN SL fans.


Once you have set up the fans together, the next step is to connect the provided adapter cable to the exposed side of the fan on the end. This has more pins than before on the previous gen UNI FAN SL fans, and is also where the wireless connectivity from the controller comes into play. The connection process is similar in that you slot the plastic keys into the matching holes in the frame and push the module in the direction of the pointing arrow. This means you need to orient it correctly, but Lian Li allows you to take off the cover of the housing to move the cable to the other side entirely, if it works out better for cable management. In fact, there is also some room between the cover and the body to wrap the flat ribbon cable around to shorten the exposed cable side for a cleaner look. This is the first useful benefit of the wireless system I am seeing, although keep in mind you will still have a cable going to a 4-pin PWM header, or even to your PSU via the SATA adapter cable if the fans need more juice. The wireless controller then plugs into an available USB port, with Lian Li recommending you only use the ports on the back of your motherboard for a smoother experience. If you don't have one available or don't like how it looks, you can also just plug it internally using the controller adapter cable, which one requires a spare internal USB 2.0 header. There's also a PWM connector on this cable, which is supposed to give you PWM speed control over the fans and allow you to sync the fan speed with other fans connected to the motherboard. Ultimately, this is a set of wireless fans that have more wires associated with them than the product name suggests.