Closer Examination

Seen above is the Montech AX120 PWM fan in both color options. These are standard 120 mm fans that are 25 mm thick making it effectively a guarantee to easily fit inside any PC case intended to use 120 mm fans for airflow and cooling. Note the slightly rounded frame though which was the first thing that made me hesitant to test these as a water cooling radiator fan. The black and white versions differ tremendously in the color given Montech has committed to making them completely black or white on the frame. Common to both is a plastic diffuser that goes all around the outer edge of the frame on the front, responsible for the integrated RGB lighting courtesy the 20 LEDs uniformly distributed underneath. The fan rotor has nine sharp blades with plenty of space in between as well as from the frame to the blades to where this feels like a hybrid design at best and not necessarily one optimized for static pressure. Branding comes in the form of Montech writing on the front hub and note also the rubber dampening pads on the corners. These jut outward to make for a total of 28 mm thickness when not installed, although they do compress down in use from the screws to where it will be a non-issue from a thickness perspective.


From the back we see a fairly standard 4-way stator vane configuration employing a typical curved design. A sticker on the back adds further branding but also provides useful information about the rated current and power draw of each fan—0.2 A and 2.16 W, respectively, so there is surely some rounding up ongoing with the former number. Regardless, knowing this is the worst case scenario including start-up boost, you can easily power 3-4 AX120 PWM fans off a single standard 1 A PWM fan header on your motherboard without needing to resort to a standalone controller. These fans use a hydrodynamic bearing that is rated for an MTBF of 40,000 hours—not the best, but the three year warranty does help assuage immediate fears. It's also a fairly common fan bearing these days and should work better than a cheap sleeve bearing when it comes to installing the fans in any orientation inside your case. Two flat ribbon cables come out the side of the frame, and this is where I wanted to see a white set of cables on the white fan, which are 50 cm long with one terminating in a 4-pin connector for PWM fan control and the other ending in a 3-pin 5 VDC D-RGB connector for LED power and control alike.


Since Montech was kind enough to send along a couple of samples of the RX120 PWM, despite me having insisted I won't be able to cover them, I figured the least I could do is simply show off one of those alongside the equivalent AX120 PWM fan. The rotor is in gray here, although it also comes in black or white color options, and you can see it is installed in a reverse configuration. The reason for this is because the RGB LEDs are only on the front of the fan frame and, if you need to have the fans pushing or pulling in air in a manner where the LEDs will be blocked from view, these can help be a compromise. Having tested fans with reversed rotors in the past, I can tell you the performance deficit is significant when up against a radiator.


Seen above are the two Montech AX120 PWM fans powered on and lit up so you get a better idea of what to expect from the LEDs on board. The white color version does come off slightly brighter around the fan, which is likely due to white reflecting more light compared to black. The diffusing ring around the frame contains 20 RGB LEDs per fan and they help uniformly light up the frame to where you don't really see the individual LEDs here. I'd still classify the lighting effect as average at best compared to the typical RGB fan in 2023 which has LEDs in the frame and hub, if not also on both sides of the fan. Given the LEDs are powered and controlled off any standard 5 V D-RGB header, you can expect to also coordinate the lighting with other such compatible items in your PC such as LED strips and any integrated lighting on the motherboard, CPU cooler, GPU block etc. Montech does not provide a separate LED controller and/or hub to go with these fans, and there is no first-party software either.