Introduction

It's been a while since I last reviewed a Silverstone fan, going back to 2018 for that weird monster of a 140 mm fan that thinks it is a 120 mm fan. While it was a great performer in its own right, the odds of people actually using it as a radiator fan were low since you obviously could not have multiple of those fans alongside each other on a 120 mm sized radiator. I also tested several more traditional Silverstone fans before I joined TechPowerUp, and they have generally been impressive for the money. Let's see how the brand fares in 2024 as we take a look at the Silverstone Shark Force 120 mm fans today.


The Shark Force 120 comes in non-RGB and ARGB versions, and I have both here. I decided to start with the non-RGB version to set the baseline before testing the RGB version in a future review, this should also help tell us how the incorporation of LEDs affects performance in a more direct manner. The Shark Force 120 is a standard square frame 120 mm fan that uses distinctive Silverstone-designed fan blades which are seemingly designed for lower noise and higher performance. This is also a high-speed fan with a rated 2500 max RPM, and yet Silverstone also advertises the fans go down as low as under 300 RPM to make it a highly versatile fan. Silverstone is also boasting a modular cable design allowing cleaner connection of multiple fans together, so let's thank the brand for providing review samples to TechPowerUp and begin with a look at the product specifications in the table below.

Specifications

Packaging and Accessories

Silverstone sent over two retail units of the Shark Force 120 for review. The product box is fairly simple in the absence of a decorative banderole that usually goes over the base cardboard material. Instead, here we see the cardboard itself has the various info printed directly on it including the brand logo, product name, and a render of the fan on the front. Marketing features and fan specs are on the back with the fan type listed in multiple languages on the sides.


There are two seals on the top helping keep the contents in place during transit. Opening the box, we see the fan as well as various accessories on top—I would have preferred the accessories be placed in a separate compartment to avoid any damage to the fan itself. Silverstone includes a warranty guide, a set of four metal self-tapping screws, and a 48 cm long cable that goes from 4-pin PWM to 4-pin JST. There's also a second JST splitter cable which comes already installed on the longer cable, although you can remove it if you are only using the cable with a single fan. This second cable has two JST connectors spaced at 5 and 10.5 cm to allow you to connect two fans to the same longer fan and thus control them together off a single PWM fan header.