The Thermaltake SWAFAN 12 RGB is a one trick pony, and being a good radiator fan is not it. I suppose if you are looking purely for a low noise fan with airflow going through medium restriction radiators, you could certainly do worse. But there are enough drawbacks here to where I can't recommend people buying this with the sole intention of cooling your DIY loop, especially when we are somewhat spoiled for choices considering you could instead get the Tt TOUGHFAN 12, the Noctua NF-A12x25, or the Phanteks T30-120 instead. Slap on an LED fan frame if you need lighting too and call it a day.

See, the only reason to consider the SWAFAN 12 RGB is for its unique replaceable fan blades feature. There have been fans in the past where you could push a switch and get the motor to spin the other way, but those were generally terrible in both reliability and effectiveness. Going with a much simpler, yet fulfilling, approach here was key and providing the replacement blades along with bearing lubrication should help calm down people who are worried about the longevity of these fans. That said, the bearing noise at lower fan speeds doesn't help much, and note that I can't speak about how well these will fare over time given the short review time frames.

The SWAFAN 12 RGB feels like an experimental project that gets close to the desired end result but not quite there yet. There were multiple occasions during the course of this review where I felt things could have been done better—the dip switches on the controller, the software program that can be finicky and missing some features, the near-proprietary connections which necessitate a higher standard, and also use of MOLEX and micro USB connectors on the controller come to mind immediately. Instead, it's obvious where the resources went here with 30 RGB LEDs split across three rings per fan, a vast plethora of lighting options that come off quite well in person, and being able to market these fans as something novel indeed. I agree on that front and have no issues awarding the Thermaltake SWAFAN 12 RGB our innovation award, but that's as far as I am willing to go here.