Even after watching this video I still went out and picked up a pair of the three pack starter kits and a single 120. Happy to say that Corsair took note of the videos like yours basically tearing them a new one and provided a right angle cable in the box instead of the straight cable. As well the single had a small right angle to right angle cable included!! My only gripe was how expensive these fans are. Happily, Best Buy had them on sale recently and I saved a ton of eddies!!
I purchased the fans as well and they included angled cables I actually had more than I needed. My CPU temps can be anywhere between 30-35c. My only gripe is that some of the shorter cables are a little too short. I’m on a dual chambered case so I was forced to buy a longer cable.
@@daveygravey8888no don’t use them, they are a terrible company and make extremely mediocre products that cost more than literally every other company available. 0/10
I agree, I tried these fans out a few months ago, and they're not very good. However, corsair just released some new fans, RX120's, and these on the other hand are quite good, performance wise, and quiet... I hope you get the chance to review these aswell. Great job on your videos!
I just moved my build into a new case surrounded by RX fans and a 360mm AIO and it made a world of difference in my temps! The RX fans don’t have quite the LED presence as the QX, but the RX are about performance and airflow - and they move some of the highest CFM’s on the market! I don’t regret going with RX, I was happy to give up the LED brightness/vividness for the max performance
@ it’s been a minute, but yes, I believe I had more than enough right angle cables because that’s mostly what it came with. Keep in mind, they are relatively short, but I had more than enough right angle cables to complete a build with 13 total fans in the 6500D airflow case
Having just bought the newly released RX line of fans I think you need to look at them. Everything you have hated on is just not an issue with the RX fans. They came with a 90 Deg connector, the single fans come with spare cables. Did corsair mess up with the QX line as you outline, yep probably, but as someone who just bought 6x RX120's and 2x RX140's I had no issues, even the 2 expansion RX140's came with a 10cm cable in the box.
Great testing! I decided to buy case + radiator fans about 3 months ago for my O11, the Corsair system really appealed to me as it looked very versatile and scalable but the price was absurd, I decided to go with 9 AL120V2 after considering several options, and I'm quite pleased with the fans. Now after seeing this video, I feel like I dodge a lemon. Thank you for your testing, it really help us simple folks, make an informed decisions.
the expansion pack does comes with a cable, i received cables in each of the expansion packs i bought, they just didn't showed that on their website apparently
I use corsair fans because I have six rgb channels and I like the option of controlling the rgb and even rpm individually does anyone know if you can do this on a stack of three fans using this system?
moved from Corsair to LianLi and couldn't be happier. I had an okay time with iCue but there's loads of problems from other users. But a scam is something that is dishonest or a fraud which these fans are not. They're expensive but they make building an absolute breeze.
@@ronniekregar3482 full of doo doo i have two generations of the RGB fans and the corsair software is aids it crashes and constantly reboots they are so bad i gave them to my son for his pc even tho they cost me close to 200 for a set of 5 lol even my STELLA rgb fans that were 9.99 have gave me infintely less trouble
Lian li infinity fans I think look better and nicer quality. But problem is they idle at 800rmp and don't go lower. Can't adjust in connect software. So basically your rig sounds like a commercial airliner at cruising altitude
I love Corsair stuff. Have built several computers and had Corsair every time. I just updated last month my month recent build with 6 QX120 fans and 3 QX140 fans. Prior to that I had a bunch of QL120, QL140, LL120 and SP140 fans. Changed them all out for the QX except for 3 LL120s to use in push pull on the rad with the QX120. I also have LED strips, Dominator Platinum LED RAM, and the LCD on the pump. Never had an issue with the system and don’t want different brands so everything is the same eco system. It’s easy to have all the temps for RAM, PSU, GPU, CPU, And fans, and then have fan control, pump control, and alerts all in one place. Some of the point you made don’t make sense. Someone is NOT going to buy just one fan to use. It wouldn’t make sense. Why put ONE fan in the case and then have other fans in there as well? The singles don’t need the hub because it’s not needed. Someone would buy a LL or a QL to get the same thing. The Link series is made to be used with other link items, not just buy and install one fan. So that would not even be an issue for anyone building a computer.
I was an early adopter of these fans i bought them when they became available. There has been lots of issues with the software side. The conroller firmware was crap my fans started blinking red while gaming and so on. Had to wait for the firmware uppdate to fix that issue. I allso had the same issue of fans not detected. I bought 6x120 fans and 3x140 fans. I allso bought the extra cable kit and some 90 degree cables. 2 of the 120 fans have allready broken. The motor started to make weird noises. Im going to have to RMA them havent done it yet. So yeah im not very pleased with these fans. For the price they should be a lot better. At times im thinking about getting rid of them and RGB all together and installing my old black Noctua fans back.
Why do you spend time ranting how you should base the temp sensor off the exhaust of the fan so its pointless on the intakes, when the software allows you to base your fan curve off a specific sensor, i.e. the exhaust fan and apply it to all the fans(Makes your point redundant at that point imo especially as you showcase it at the end of the rant). Also the units in your review are older models. They just recently put out a, I guess refresh of them that now includes a right angled cable splitter in the individual fans and the expansion kit. Also the long cable in that expansion kit is now a right angle to straight cable from hub to fan. The website and manual doesn't show this ofc but I bought these at the beginning of the month and they came with these cables so I have 2 extras as i bought the kit and 2 individual fans. Haven't personally had any issues with the software either. I think its pretty clear these are intended for water cooling setups and priced accordingly as people who watercool tend to be more flexible with the budget and focus on looks. The rgb commentary doesn't make sense to me as you can't really tell from a foot away or more that the lighting isn't as dense as it could be. Unless you stick your face right up to them its not that observable. While yes you can argue it should be better for a 50 dollar fan remember its designed to link up to 14 devices at once and u can only push so much voltage for both the fan and the lighting or whatever else you are daisy chaining(You could argue corsair should have made the ring more dense and got rid of the strips on the sides since those tend to be less visible in most use cases). You are paying for the ecosystem and brand as well as the fans being maglev which has always been more premiumly priced from corsair. Obviously its not the greatest and probably could stand to be cheaper(or better) but there is still value here with these fans and they know who is going to buy them. So yes if these are not what you are looking for in the aspects you find them to be too weak at for your needs or wants, by all means buy anything else. There's a big market of fans out there.
RGB has always been a scam. No one needs to spend an extra 10, 20, or even 30 USDs for some LEDs that cost the company 5 cents. I can pick up Delta 120mm 7.5K RPM IP68 rated fans for less. Sure they don't come with LEDs and buggy software, but for the price, you are getting a lot more fan. If the fan can't second as a method to cycle water in a literal fish tank, it isn't worth 50 USD.
@NovicePCBuilder The issue is manufactures found it is more profitable to sell to the top 10% of the wealth in the world thanks to stonks and VC money. If you asked an investor which company he wanted to give his money to; a company that sells 1,000 products for 1 dollar and profits 500, or a company that makes 1 product for 1,000 dollars and profits 500, he would choose the latter.
@NovicePCBuilder You seem to miss the point. If everyone excludes the production of products for the other 90%, those people lose. If car manufactures only sold multi-million dollar 4-door economy sedans with neon under-glow, there is no "I just choose to buy something else" you simply don't own a car. If all the fan manufactures decide a fan is now 50+ USD and has to have RGBs, people who can't afford it, simply don't own fans. This product and it's price gouging should be shunned You don't live in a free market when a single man has enough net assets to make every person in a capital city of the USA a millionaire.
@NovicePCBuilder Next you are going to say micro-transactions in video games are a good thing because people who can and will buy it do;; and those who can't or won't, don't.
@NovicePCBuilder Companies should be shunned for price-gouging to prevent the future possibility of only over priced RGB fans. Why would you argue against shunning bad market behavior? Are you also against negative reviews because some people like the product? They released an objectively poor performing fan that is overpriced. Should I send them a gold star and pat them on the back because it will still make them money and people will still buy it?
@NovicePCBuilder "Are you going to enlighten us as to what the price should be? And if you do, what is this price based on, other than your opinion?" Yes, the gross margin on a product should be around 20% at the highest and 5% at the lowest. Based on decades of research of countless economists around the world. Corsair has increased their margins from ~24% in 2019 to ~31% in 2023.. There is a projected increase in margins by ~4.5% for 2024. With that being said, fans are one of the highest margin products Corsair sells, which off-sets some of their lower margin products. I will say it likely has a 50-60% margin on it. Correcting 50 USD for a single fan to what economists consider "high margin" (20%) product within a healthy economy, the fan should be 28.13 USDs at the top-end.
I just rebuilt my cooling system using the QX system including the H100LCD 240 cooler w/2-QX fans. I was in the same position as you spoke of the rear fan single. But my single came with a right angle cord. I was very surprised, maybe your and others reviews changed things with Corsair. I had some real difficult connection angles and had to try several times. I ended up with one extra right angle. Once it was all plugged in everything worked great. I am upgrading from the H100i Cappelix 240(All those wires)and it was a good cooler, but made weird sounds. When NewEgg had the AIO w/Lcd SCREEN, 1/2 off I took the plunge. Single fan price is too high. But the upgrade was my Christmas present to myself. It is 8 months according to RUclips, I think Corsair has responded at least a little. It took several days to get my CPU to idle@ 40c. So Cost for me was $100 for AIO/$123.00 for 3pack/$50 for single=273.00 I did consider Lian Li, but that 1/2 off AIO w/LCD sold me. I am at this moment happy with outcome.
Good video. I don't understand the graph at minute 9:15. The higher the temperature, the lower the noise? So, the noise increases when the temperature is lower?
After living with Corsair products for a few years, the only thing I want in my system from them are their PSUs. The iCUE software has been a nightmare for so many years that I have zero confidence that they'll ever get it working well. I'm done with Corsair.
For what it's worth iCue is the best RGB software I had to put up with. Try Gigabyte's and you'll enter a whole new level of $hit tier you didn't even deem possible in your wildest nightmares. Compared to that I'm very happy with Corsair.
After I watched this, my vision towards Corsair changed significantly to the more holding back type, even though I live this philosophy of controlling everything of your setup with just one app.
After reading this, I have no idea what you're trying to say but I doubt you are Corsair - which would mean you cannot have a 'vision towards' Corsair - you do not run or control it, which are requirements for having a 'vision'. Were you planning on somehow buying Corsair - the company? Your comment only make sense if you are.
@noth606 buddy, you need to open your eyes. I meant that I would stay away from Corsair products because they are too expensive for their performance. But I was struggling with that choice since I have perfection issues, and I won't calm down if my upcoming pc won't have a good economy with brands. And if you still don't understand what I try to tell, then swap of your dump ass brain with a much smarter one for fuck sake
I slowly transitioned from Corsair to Lian li and I don’t regret it, my favorite purchase were their sl infinity fans and I foresee keeping those for many years to come so long as they continue to work
Most reviewers said they couldn't really test these fans because they're 100% controlled by iCue and therefore some things couldn't be tested properly. So, how did YOU do it?
Case fans have become the last part that companies figured out that people will grossly overpay for. In a world where Arctic and Thermalright exist, there should be very few reasons why anyone would buy these. At least Noctua genuinely does do some great R&D and engineering. I feel Corsair is like the Beats by Dre of computer parts.
My previous gen LEDs started burning out and showing wonky colors so I was thinking about picking these up. The problem is, I've got 9 fans, not counting the 360 AIO. I only need a single controller, 2 long cables and 2 short cables, what sucks is that there is no financially sensible of purchasing that configuration without a lot of leftover hardware or paying an arm and a leg.
this just saved me plenty of money, going back to review my ideas for case fans, thought they maybe a golden ticket to simplicity, I love STS form getting to the truth of the matter and pointing in the right direction, thanks for the vid its helped greatly with this new build I'm doing,
Thanks for making this review. I was searching everywhere for this. You are definitely right, no channel has made any coverage of the new Corsair fans, AIOs, Link system, recent iCue stability and features, or for the new Link enabled Hydro X parts…. I myself plan to use them in an overkill custom loop build, but I was curious on their performance. Looks like they are not any better than the previous LL120’s I owned… if not maybe even worse. Corsair definitely could do better with the lighting. A better diffuser would help, or increasing LED count and brute forcing it.
Considering i have AC and I just slide open a bit the glass when playing something heavy. I gonna buy these for Decoration lol. I'd get lyam Lee since I love their design. However most of my set up is corsair already so gotta reduce too much background apps
Got these as in take fans of my Lian Li 011 and they work perfectly fine. RGB is beautiful, fans are spinning at 1000 rpm and are near silent, Icue works without issues for me, yes I have a full water cooled system and don't need super high performance. These are excellent for my use case.
The 3500x case already comes with the iCUE link fans, the controller, and the neccessary cables to connect other ones, but buying the fans to DIY would of course cost more. and I do agree those corsair iCUE RGB fans are very expensive compared to the other brands, but corsairs fans have specific colors that stand out compared to other fans which makes mix matching a bad thing to do if you care about the aesthetics.
excellent comparison and measurements approach. keep in mind that this fan does not compete with any of the fans you compared it to, it actually competes with the lian-li uni v2 fans lineup. pushing air efficiently isn't the strong suit of both model lineups, its primarily focused on cable management (since both are being sold solely on the "1 cable to power all" approach). the problem being is that when you actually go 140mm, because there are not that many good options out there except for Noctua, or if you want LED's then there really is no other option out there except for corsair or Lian-Li, that some buyers would just buy these types of fans regardless of their performance because they would just be "good enough". personally i'd prefer convenience over performance and noise, which is why i went all out 140mm in the first place, and why i'm not considering the QX140 fans since i already have their H170I ICUE LINK AIO (which kinda comes with everything you need if you want to add 3 more fans in the front and 1 in the back). the pricing for any PC fan right now though is absolutely insane, nearly 50$ for a single fan is midday robbery... heck even Noctua's 40mmx20mm fans are overpriced as heck at 25$ per fan. i'm a HUGE Noctua Fan (no pun intended) but unfortunately when it comes to cable management its really messy to work with oldschool style wired PWM fans lol
Thank you for covering these! I could not find anyone else reviewing the fan itself. So glad I bought the Arctic Freezer 3 and outfitted it with 6 P12 maxes instead.
Thanks for the video, it was lots of good info. Your closing thoughts were insightful for me because I am actually planning to build a large system that should easily be able to cool with these "bad" fans at low RPM. I am mostly interested because of the aesthetics and the cable management. I understand I will pay a premium for that, but I am not going for a hyper-optimized build this time. My biggest concern that you raised was with the limited LED quantity, as that will certainly diminish the aesthetic aspect.
I was originally thinking getting Corsair QX fans for my first build But based on the research and suggestions from my friends and how it looks like on H6 flow, I’ll rather go for Lian Li’s Uni Fans, but the AL V2s since I find SL V2 version look less appealing
If you use an AMD CPU and want the best looking build there is nothing better on the market, also the new fan price is 99 euro for 3 fans with the controller and with the new firmware now support up to 12 devices on every port 24 in total.
I bought these for one specific reason; consolidation of cable management. I have a 5000X from corsair and cabling 10 fans to a commander to lighting node to another fan controller is a thing of nightmares in that midsized case. I can barely shut the door. I have a 4090 so I have a large psu that comes with lots of cables for the pcie connections, and until I can get my 12+4 cable from corsair to consolidate more cables. I bought these before seeing this review so I am a bit disappointed in the testing results. Yours was the only video really showing its true flaws.
Kind of sad that I didn't see this before I bought a single RGB fan from corsair for my case. It's supposed to be the one bit of bling in itc cause the rest of my fans are buried in the back of the case behind mesh or are in area's you'll never see them so the only RGB you can see is on my pumps and on that one corsair fan.
Are you sure that you didn't get bad fans? I've seen at least two other performance tests that showed they perform well enough - not nearly as poor your tests indicate. Your diagram indicates that it only has 12 LEDs but don't forget that there are LEDs in the center of the fan plus the other side. That's the 34 LEDs in total.
So I bought all of this a month ago, and it all comes with 90' cables, and the Single indeed comes with a 90' cable as well, and even the Link AIO comes with a controller as well. sadly your video is out of date on this, as I did in fact think the same even ordered extra cables. So I don't know when they made the Silent change but I got month a month ago, and it has everything, you will need in the boxes.
I just found your channel searching for reviews for the peerless assassin and It's like I found a hidden gem, your work is really great hope you get to the point where you have the funding for the more "scientific gear" but even without it your way is totally fine and we like it. Subscribed!❤
The main complaint of the first half of this video seems to be "You have to buy more fans." The latter half is much more compelling. I recently built with the QX fans and 3 RX fans sitting behind a radiator out of sight. I chose them primarily because of the LINK system and I feel like the RGB is fine. I knew it was expensive, but I build a new PC once every so many years and the fans are always the biggest pain-point to me. Anyway, had I seen this video first, I might have reconsidered the LINK system or maybe just went with the RX fans throughout, since they're cheaper and don't waste space with the RGB ring. Having said that, you should also test the RX version. Again, I would assume they perform better, but of course never know.
Great review calling a spade a spade is doing a great service for the pc building community! Corsair needs to just scrap this line of fans and start over.
I mean... Yeah you can count them, but it doesn't look... bad...? I mean it just looks good in a weird Corsair style. I cannot describe it but, just like how I adore the QLs, where you can also count the LEDs, I kinda adore these ones as well.
I guess it depends on the observer. Nowadays I usualy measure ARGB "Quality" by how "fluent" the transition is. If you can count them, it's not going to be particularly fluent cause you don't have enough to prevent stutter. I guess this is a design choise that everybody needs to decide for himself But I never assumed there are people out there that enjoy that older "countable" LEDs style. Gonna keep that in mind
Very glad I saw this, so thank you! Currently planning a new build, while maintaining my previous (which has corsair fans & aio which i’m about to replace). Although RGB can be pretty, i’d rather spend all that money on a better CPU or GPU. I Don’t spend my time staring at the case after all 😂
Corsair turned me against RGB, I had 10 QL 120's with 2 Commander Pro's and at the time the Corsair GPU and CPU Water blocks and Reservoir. The wiring was what turned me against it. To upgrade to the LINK setup, would cost me around 350quid, just for the fans, that's basically a CPU or almost 40% of a 4080 Super....I ended up getting 10 Arctic P12's for 45quid and they daisy chain, ye I lost a lot of RGB, but tbh I am loving the new look of my PC, only RGB is the RAM, GPU and the AIO, which I set the colour's by using the Hardware profile and uninstalled all the RGB software :D
Nice job on this review. I don't know what's been going on with Corsair, but they've just been constantly making a lot of boneheaded stupid mistakes lately. I've had several bad products from them over the last couple years. Such as the optical k100. Great idea, until you find out that the actuation distance is so small and the springs so loose that the weight of your fingers barely resting on top of them while gaming is enough trigger them, causing constant accidental key presses that actually cost you screw ups in game. And the top function row, bunched up so close to the number keys that it's really easy to accidentally trigger function keys any time you use the top row. I can't count the number of times I accidentally hit F11 simply by quickly flicking a finger over to hit backspace and barely grazing F11 in the process. Worst keyboard I've ever used. I tried everything to get used to that keyboard from using a wrist rest (which I never usually use), to changing the way I hold my hands while typing. And why? Because Corsair desperately wanted to chase the "fastest switch on the market" sales pitch. Even at the cost of the functionality of the keyboard itself. After 2 years, I finally gave up and bought a Wooting analog keyboard instead. So glad to finally be rid of that Corsair keyboard. Nice switches, terrible implementation, awful keyboard layout. Lighting implementation was really good though and I miss my volume wheel, but those were the only two things I liked. But I needed it to be a good keyboard first and foremost and that's where it failed miserably. So it had to go. Bought an iCUE Nexus specifically for the K100, specifically for hardware statistics monitoring. You know, for the reason the device was marketed and sold. Except, it turned out that there were very few stats you could actually monitor. To the point that the display was virtually useless. You couldn't even monitor RAM usage. You could get a readout for your RAM timings, but nothing for the actual RAM usage. Why in the world would I ever need to constantly know what my RAM timings are? That's a set and forget BIOS setting. Again, great device idea, boneheadedly stupid implementation made all the worse because even with lots of users all complaining to Corsair for years about the lack of options (a lot of users especially complaining about the lack of RAM usage stastics as being an insultingly basic function not to include) Corsair never updated nor expanded the Nexus functionality and refused to open iCUE up to the community by providing an API the community could use to make what they needed themselves. You know, the kind of thing even Logitech did back with the G510 and G19 keyboards they made over a decade ago. I've now gotten rid of the Nexus and bought the Gskill WigiDash instead and use it as an AIDA64 sensor panel. Which works so much better than the Nexus ever did and actually fulfills it's role as an actual sensor display. And these are only two examples of the failures I've experienced with Corsair's products lately. I don't know who they've hired to be their product manager for the last several years, but I've not been impressed with their products lately. Always on the cusp of genius, yet always fail due to the most shortsighted and stupidly boneheaded decisions that end up crippling their products to uselessness. And the reason I keep using the word boneheaded, is because these failures are the type that should be so easily avoidable that it boggles the mind that they keep screwing up in this way. These fans are just another example. A brilliantly designed interconnect system marred by an absolutely terrible and useless fan. And the thing that boggles the mind in this case, is that Corsair actually knows how to make good fans. So how the hell could they allow this to happen? About the only things Corsair makes that I still trust, is their RAM and their headsets. And while I've liked their PSUs in the past, with how bad my experiences have been lately and the recent patterns of behavior with their products, I'm at my point where when it comes time for me to update my PSU, I'm probably going to avoid Corsair. Corsair just isn't the enthusiast community embracing company they used to be anymore. Too focused on the chasing trends and buzzwords rather than trying to make good reliable, well considered products. And too quick to find ways to nickel and dime you, rather than including everything you need for the interconnect ecosystem they want you to adopt (like forcing you to have to buy a simple cable separately rather than including one in the expensive kit you just bought). I'm not saying I'm assuming their PSU's suck now. I'm saying this constant and repeated behavior by Corsair over the last several years has eroded my trust to the point where I am now looking elsewhere first, because I'm tired of getting burned by boneheaded product decisions and botched implementations. The Corsair iCUE Link QX120 RGB is just another example in the perpetuation of this trend.
I can totally understand why you are frustrated about not having additional cables for various configs in the box. But IMHO, excluding the cost overhead, I like the idea of only buying what you need. We have soooo much e-waste with our tech that I am happy to avoid creating more if I can do so.
Agreed, already had 2 fans die on me within 6 months of use. Also, the software is always breaking and the only solution I have is to run the PC without iCue running, just in device hardware mode. Corsair should realllllllly put some more effort into their software issues.
Coming from someone who’s been a corsair fan boy every since I used one of their AIOs, I’m not buying these as I’ve already spent quite a bit of money on their ML 120 RGB Elites. These QXs looked a bit too flashy and a bit too good to be true when they came out, and it looks like my suspicions were correct. Dropped a well deserved like, great video! Keep criticizing some of their other overpriced products. It really needs the attention.
I have purchased a icue link 150i tha have qx fan and now i am thinking to change all my ql120 fans , but RX are looking much better than QX beside that they have one rgb line on the side ....but man QX are so expensive 170€ for 3 fan pack !!!! And they dont have lcd as lian li wtf corsair
i spent 200 bucks on 4 corsair ql 140mm fans for my build less then 6 months ago and the stupid things white leds are already going yellowish. i will never buy another corsair fan again. im going to get the be quiet light wings soon
Argus Monitor is fan controlling software that has an RGB option as well. I use that instead of iCue to control my HD120's and H150I RGB AIO. iCue is way too bloated.
These fans are not performance oriented, I see no problem with the data. The performance oriented ones are the LX series, with extremely high static pressure, useful in custom loop configurations.
I'm going for these too, together with the LCD display ones (which requires a separate controller). Although, i was in doubt to get those corsair's as i am already in iCue anyways because of my keyboard, PSU and fans of another PC that i connected to this one lol (well, controller wise).
I have a system full of these and I have to admit they are indeed overpriced. Got 9 QX120 and 3 QX140 and I went from a system full of Phanteks T30 fans and the temperature difference is actually very small and insignificant even with my RTX 4090 and 7800X3D under a very heavy workload over many hours. I have already used them in a build with 6 fans and did not see a big difference there either when compared to 6 T30 fans. The difference might be more noticeable in a system with very few fans. Don't get me wrong the Phanteks T30 is the superior fan and at a much lower price too when it comes to the most important thing a fan is for which is cooling down your components. The QX series is not the go to fans for anybody that wants great price to performance, I only got them because I use them in a showcase build and they are very good looking in my opinion. Less wires to deal with when connecting the fans and the icue link h150i is easily integrated into the same ecosystem so I can avoid the cable clutter on that too. The hub that controls everything only uses a single usb header on the motherboard which is nice for me so I can connect the AX1600i to the other header I have available without using any adapters. The fans also connect together without any or much of a gap between them so everything put together it actually makes a huge difference to the aesthetics of the build if this is the number 1 priority. I have never encountered any issue with the icue software not working and I have been using it since 2019 but I have owned very few corsair components over the years so it has not been extensively used before recently. The biggest issue with these fans right now is the price point in my opinion. The entire icue link setup cost me roughly 800$ (Not AX1600i included ofc) Both my RTX 4090 and 7800X3D easily operates at 25 - 30 degrees lower temp than the limits all day long at the quiet preset on all of the fans and the pump but other much cheaper fans would also do the same. This is a waste of money if you only need performance and nothing else! There are many other things that are just as big of a waste of money. One example is the Asus Rog Matrix 4090 which costs twice as much as the cheaper RTX 4090 variants and on a good day you could expect a few percent more performance for a 100% price increase. This is a hobby just like everything else. Some people will happily pay a fortune for an old classic car which is objectively worse than a brand new one and an audiophile will spend every dime on silver plated cables. None of it may be good value or a responsible way to spend the paycheck but everybody are happy to go back to their hobby at the end of the day.
I agree about their fans being junk. They however make rather nice cases (although a bit too iCue centric these days - I don't care though, I still rock the same Corsair case I bought in 2016) and nice PSUs (I have the HX1500i, great piece of equipment), and I've been buying their RAM sticks for more than a decade now in several builds without a single issue whatsoever. Lately I bought a kit of their new non binary memory sticks in the Dominator Titanium flavour and it's been just perfect, great capacity, great performance, cool operation, no issues at all. At 2 x 48 GB capacity and 6600 MT/s, I had AFAIK exactly three choices on the market: Corsair Dominator Titanium, Corsair Vengeance or G.Skill Trident Z5, and the Corsair ones were the only option with all-metal heatsinks for a non-RGB build, so I would not call that "junk".
I was interested in this series a couple of months ago, but decided to go with a LS720. It's been great. I didn't really find any review for the QX120s or the iCue Link AIOs, but they just seem overpriced as hell. Now thanks to this video, I really know that I got lucky by not buying this crap. I do like the connection system they made though.
I can't think of a single fan Corsair has released that was a solid, quiet, performer. They've instead relied on gimmicks, looks, and marketing to sell their fans. Not everything they make is over-priced and under-performing, but a lot of it is. They ride on the coat-tails of having managed an Apple-like fan base (no pun intended). Any corsair product I can think of almost has a better performing, lower cost, equivalent from another brand. PSUs, RAM and PC cases are the only exceptions that come to mind; Corsair tends to do the well, and at somewhat reasonable price-points (but let's not forget that Corsair led the charge when it came to putting air-restricting glass front panels on some of their cases too).
4:20 six wing design?? You have the thing center frame, count them again. You know, there is a handy trick for this, don't talk about it like that, then your inability to count won't matter. You can say 'multiwing' since it communicates almost the same thing. The 'wing' count here is padding anyway, no one gives a poop about that, skip it.
It's just so sad to see that evryone praises these fans like they are actually good. While in real life they are worse than Arctic p12s which kost 10 times less.
Forcing you into using their proprietary shit including some cables not included by default and running their bloatware is disgusting. Just fucking use standard PWM and ARGB headers, or at least make it an option. I'm fine with fan-to-fan connection using proprietary standard if I also have an option to connect all of these fans individually to the motherboard. I'll never buy anything from corsair, all they do is mediocre overpriced products with shitload of rgb put everywhere they can (and as we can see with these fans they can’t even make that right), form over function.
They look nice indeed ,my QL 120 fans already have broken leds , some of the leds instead of white they showing purple !!! I have 30€ 3 fans pack from China from 2020 they still working 😅 ....so a little bit disappointed, i want to buy another brad but i have to invest a lot in keyboard mouse fans AIO rams , just not worth to replace everything because of those corsairs fans , everything inside my pc its corsair ......
i thought there was something wrong with my build, i couldn't comprehend that such expensive fans are performing like this, so much noise and shit temperature, RIP my money
Because of your review, I cancelled my order for a Corsair 360 aio. I’m not a huge Corsair fan. I honestly think they’re a terrible greedy company but I need a 360 aio for my build. Sadly the Arctic Liquid Freezer III is too thick for my pc case. So I decided to go with the Corsair cooler because it’s on sale for $129. You just saved me $129 and I have to remind myself from here on out, Corsair will always sell shit (minus their PSU) products.
@@STSYTwell then take a look at their latest product stack. they want a HUNDRED AND FIFTY Euros for THREE FANS and a small RGB Controller. this is cents worth of material and single digit dollars worth of labour for a 1000% price increase.
Thanks dude! I was considering buying some QX120 and they are garbage and very expensive. I will got for the Sp120, cheaper. Much better for my pocket.
Even after watching this video I still went out and picked up a pair of the three pack starter kits and a single 120. Happy to say that Corsair took note of the videos like yours basically tearing them a new one and provided a right angle cable in the box instead of the straight cable. As well the single had a small right angle to right angle cable included!! My only gripe was how expensive these fans are. Happily, Best Buy had them on sale recently and I saved a ton of eddies!!
Now does it include the cable? How can I make sure that whoever buys really brings it?
@@gabrielmolina904 The cable have been included for a long time already.
I purchased mine in december 2023 and got them included.
I purchased the fans as well and they included angled cables I actually had more than I needed. My CPU temps can be anywhere between 30-35c. My only gripe is that some of the shorter cables are a little too short. I’m on a dual chambered case so I was forced to buy a longer cable.
@@BigGregI’m so glad I read this comment I just bought my mb ram and power supply I wanted to use Corsair and bro had me worried.
@@daveygravey8888no don’t use them, they are a terrible company and make extremely mediocre products that cost more than literally every other company available. 0/10
This is the type of video that made me subscribe in the first place. Excellent job!
Welcome aboard!
Glad to hear I delivered
I agree, I tried these fans out a few months ago, and they're not very good. However, corsair just released some new fans, RX120's, and these on the other hand are quite good, performance wise, and quiet... I hope you get the chance to review these aswell. Great job on your videos!
just got mine on prime day. Haven't installed yet tho
I just moved my build into a new case surrounded by RX fans and a 360mm AIO and it made a world of difference in my temps! The RX fans don’t have quite the LED presence as the QX, but the RX are about performance and airflow - and they move some of the highest CFM’s on the market! I don’t regret going with RX, I was happy to give up the LED brightness/vividness for the max performance
@@larrycampbell6133did the Rx ones come with the right angle cable?
@ it’s been a minute, but yes, I believe I had more than enough right angle cables because that’s mostly what it came with. Keep in mind, they are relatively short, but I had more than enough right angle cables to complete a build with 13 total fans in the 6500D airflow case
Having just bought the newly released RX line of fans I think you need to look at them. Everything you have hated on is just not an issue with the RX fans. They came with a 90 Deg connector, the single fans come with spare cables. Did corsair mess up with the QX line as you outline, yep probably, but as someone who just bought 6x RX120's and 2x RX140's I had no issues, even the 2 expansion RX140's came with a 10cm cable in the box.
Great testing! I decided to buy case + radiator fans about 3 months ago for my O11, the Corsair system really appealed to me as it looked very versatile and scalable but the price was absurd, I decided to go with 9 AL120V2 after considering several options, and I'm quite pleased with the fans. Now after seeing this video, I feel like I dodge a lemon.
Thank you for your testing, it really help us simple folks, make an informed decisions.
Yeah. Anything corsair that requires their software is a no-no in general. I'd only buy cases and PSUs from them.
I guess I had to learn the hard way this time 😅
Next time it’s going to be case
@@STSYT with their RGB fans, obviously 😅
Thats an interesting statement. How do you back this up, considering their RGB software and fan control (iCUE) is currently the best on the market?
@@cryptedvickif its best in market doesnt that just mean the entire market segment absolutely sucks?
@@Sheltur_0311yes. Thats why I stick to corsair. I have like 1000 LEDs in each of our rigs and I really like how they look.
Mixing rgb programs sucks.
the expansion pack does comes with a cable, i received cables in each of the expansion packs i bought, they just didn't showed that on their website apparently
I use corsair fans because I have six rgb channels and I like the option of controlling the rgb and even rpm individually does anyone know if you can do this on a stack of three fans using this system?
moved from Corsair to LianLi and couldn't be happier. I had an okay time with iCue but there's loads of problems from other users. But a scam is something that is dishonest or a fraud which these fans are not. They're expensive but they make building an absolute breeze.
It's a scam when the performance doesn't match the specs.
Hello friend, how long until the review Silverstone IceMyst 420?
Probably 2 weeks, +/-
everything corsair makes is just catering to 12 y/o first time builders who think "oooo pretty leds, this must be a good fan", which is just sad...
I don't know any 12 year y/o that can afford 50 USD fans.
@@administrator4728 correction, ‘12 year-olds with rich af parents’
A lot of those 12 year olds, are 30 years old, still thinking 'shiny, shiny, good, buy'
Considering every major player offers the same rgb fans, rgb strips, rgb cases and AiOs your comment has as much thought as a 12 year old.
@@Syndroo so as a 12 year old are you agreeing with them, or do you think they are being a meany bum to your favourite brand?
I hate to break it to you but Corsair fans are way better than Lian Li. I built a rig with Infinity fans and they have an irritating oscillation.
I completely agree lol.
@@ronniekregar3482 full of doo doo i have two generations of the RGB fans and the corsair software is aids it crashes and constantly reboots they are so bad i gave them to my son for his pc even tho they cost me close to 200 for a set of 5 lol even my STELLA rgb fans that were 9.99 have gave me infintely less trouble
u mean noise ?
Lian li infinity fans I think look better and nicer quality. But problem is they idle at 800rmp and don't go lower. Can't adjust in connect software. So basically your rig sounds like a commercial airliner at cruising altitude
Yup I have the corsair fans
Love how you cant hear them at all
I love Corsair stuff. Have built several computers and had Corsair every time.
I just updated last month my month recent build with 6 QX120 fans and 3 QX140 fans.
Prior to that I had a bunch of QL120, QL140, LL120 and SP140 fans.
Changed them all out for the QX except for 3 LL120s to use in push pull on the rad with the QX120.
I also have LED strips, Dominator Platinum LED RAM, and the LCD on the pump.
Never had an issue with the system and don’t want different brands so everything is the same eco system.
It’s easy to have all the temps for RAM, PSU, GPU, CPU, And fans, and then have fan control, pump control, and alerts all in one place.
Some of the point you made don’t make sense.
Someone is NOT going to buy just one fan to use. It wouldn’t make sense. Why put ONE fan in the case and then have other fans in there as well? The singles don’t need the hub because it’s not needed. Someone would buy a LL or a QL to get the same thing. The Link series is made to be used with other link items, not just buy and install one fan. So that would not even be an issue for anyone building a computer.
I was an early adopter of these fans i bought them when they became available. There has been lots of issues with the software side.
The conroller firmware was crap my fans started blinking red while gaming and so on. Had to wait for the firmware uppdate to fix that issue.
I allso had the same issue of fans not detected. I bought 6x120 fans and 3x140 fans. I allso bought the extra cable kit and some 90 degree cables.
2 of the 120 fans have allready broken. The motor started to make weird noises. Im going to have to RMA them havent done it yet.
So yeah im not very pleased with these fans. For the price they should be a lot better.
At times im thinking about getting rid of them and RGB all together and installing my old black Noctua fans back.
Why do you spend time ranting how you should base the temp sensor off the exhaust of the fan so its pointless on the intakes, when the software allows you to base your fan curve off a specific sensor, i.e. the exhaust fan and apply it to all the fans(Makes your point redundant at that point imo especially as you showcase it at the end of the rant). Also the units in your review are older models. They just recently put out a, I guess refresh of them that now includes a right angled cable splitter in the individual fans and the expansion kit. Also the long cable in that expansion kit is now a right angle to straight cable from hub to fan. The website and manual doesn't show this ofc but I bought these at the beginning of the month and they came with these cables so I have 2 extras as i bought the kit and 2 individual fans. Haven't personally had any issues with the software either. I think its pretty clear these are intended for water cooling setups and priced accordingly as people who watercool tend to be more flexible with the budget and focus on looks. The rgb commentary doesn't make sense to me as you can't really tell from a foot away or more that the lighting isn't as dense as it could be. Unless you stick your face right up to them its not that observable. While yes you can argue it should be better for a 50 dollar fan remember its designed to link up to 14 devices at once and u can only push so much voltage for both the fan and the lighting or whatever else you are daisy chaining(You could argue corsair should have made the ring more dense and got rid of the strips on the sides since those tend to be less visible in most use cases). You are paying for the ecosystem and brand as well as the fans being maglev which has always been more premiumly priced from corsair. Obviously its not the greatest and probably could stand to be cheaper(or better) but there is still value here with these fans and they know who is going to buy them. So yes if these are not what you are looking for in the aspects you find them to be too weak at for your needs or wants, by all means buy anything else. There's a big market of fans out there.
Well said
RGB has always been a scam. No one needs to spend an extra 10, 20, or even 30 USDs for some LEDs that cost the company 5 cents. I can pick up Delta 120mm 7.5K RPM IP68 rated fans for less. Sure they don't come with LEDs and buggy software, but for the price, you are getting a lot more fan.
If the fan can't second as a method to cycle water in a literal fish tank, it isn't worth 50 USD.
@NovicePCBuilder The issue is manufactures found it is more profitable to sell to the top 10% of the wealth in the world thanks to stonks and VC money.
If you asked an investor which company he wanted to give his money to; a company that sells 1,000 products for 1 dollar and profits 500, or a company that makes 1 product for 1,000 dollars and profits 500, he would choose the latter.
@NovicePCBuilder You seem to miss the point. If everyone excludes the production of products for the other 90%, those people lose.
If car manufactures only sold multi-million dollar 4-door economy sedans with neon under-glow, there is no "I just choose to buy something else" you simply don't own a car.
If all the fan manufactures decide a fan is now 50+ USD and has to have RGBs, people who can't afford it, simply don't own fans. This product and it's price gouging should be shunned
You don't live in a free market when a single man has enough net assets to make every person in a capital city of the USA a millionaire.
@NovicePCBuilder Next you are going to say micro-transactions in video games are a good thing because people who can and will buy it do;; and those who can't or won't, don't.
@NovicePCBuilder Companies should be shunned for price-gouging to prevent the future possibility of only over priced RGB fans. Why would you argue against shunning bad market behavior? Are you also against negative reviews because some people like the product? They released an objectively poor performing fan that is overpriced. Should I send them a gold star and pat them on the back because it will still make them money and people will still buy it?
@NovicePCBuilder
"Are you going to enlighten us as to what the price should be? And if you do, what is this price based on, other than your opinion?"
Yes, the gross margin on a product should be around 20% at the highest and 5% at the lowest. Based on decades of research of countless economists around the world.
Corsair has increased their margins from ~24% in 2019 to ~31% in 2023.. There is a projected increase in margins by ~4.5% for 2024.
With that being said, fans are one of the highest margin products Corsair sells, which off-sets some of their lower margin products. I will say it likely has a 50-60% margin on it. Correcting 50 USD for a single fan to what economists consider "high margin" (20%) product within a healthy economy, the fan should be 28.13 USDs at the top-end.
I just rebuilt my cooling system using the QX system including the H100LCD 240 cooler w/2-QX fans. I was in the same position as you spoke of the rear fan single. But my single came with a right angle cord. I was very surprised, maybe your and others reviews changed things with Corsair. I had some real difficult connection angles and had to try several times. I ended up with one extra right angle. Once it was all plugged in everything worked great. I am upgrading from the H100i Cappelix 240(All those wires)and it was a good cooler, but made weird sounds. When NewEgg had the AIO w/Lcd SCREEN, 1/2 off I took the plunge. Single fan price is too high. But the upgrade was my Christmas present to myself. It is 8 months according to RUclips, I think Corsair has responded at least a little. It took several days to get my CPU to idle@ 40c. So Cost for me was $100 for AIO/$123.00 for 3pack/$50 for single=273.00 I did consider Lian Li, but that 1/2 off AIO w/LCD sold me. I am at this moment happy with outcome.
Good video. I don't understand the graph at minute 9:15. The higher the temperature, the lower the noise? So, the noise increases when the temperature is lower?
After living with Corsair products for a few years, the only thing I want in my system from them are their PSUs. The iCUE software has been a nightmare for so many years that I have zero confidence that they'll ever get it working well. I'm done with Corsair.
Same here, their coolers are crap and scammy, ICUe is dogsh#t, but their cases are ok, and their PSU are good
@@pascaldifolco4611 I guess their memory is ok too. At least it works but that's down to Hynix I guess.
The PSUs are good because they are made by Seasonic and labeled as corsair.
For what it's worth iCue is the best RGB software I had to put up with. Try Gigabyte's and you'll enter a whole new level of $hit tier you didn't even deem possible in your wildest nightmares. Compared to that I'm very happy with Corsair.
never had any isues with mine lol
After I watched this, my vision towards Corsair changed significantly to the more holding back type, even though I live this philosophy of controlling everything of your setup with just one app.
After reading this, I have no idea what you're trying to say but I doubt you are Corsair - which would mean you cannot have a 'vision towards' Corsair - you do not run or control it, which are requirements for having a 'vision'. Were you planning on somehow buying Corsair - the company? Your comment only make sense if you are.
@noth606 buddy, you need to open your eyes. I meant that I would stay away from Corsair products because they are too expensive for their performance. But I was struggling with that choice since I have perfection issues, and I won't calm down if my upcoming pc won't have a good economy with brands. And if you still don't understand what I try to tell, then swap of your dump ass brain with a much smarter one for fuck sake
I slowly transitioned from Corsair to Lian li and I don’t regret it, my favorite purchase were their sl infinity fans and I foresee keeping those for many years to come so long as they continue to work
4 months later, still wanted to thank you for speaking the truth with no filters while oyher channels don't or can't. Thanks you man 🙏🏽
Most reviewers said they couldn't really test these fans because they're 100% controlled by iCue and therefore some things couldn't be tested properly. So, how did YOU do it?
That is an interesting point.
Case fans have become the last part that companies figured out that people will grossly overpay for. In a world where Arctic and Thermalright exist, there should be very few reasons why anyone would buy these. At least Noctua genuinely does do some great R&D and engineering. I feel Corsair is like the Beats by Dre of computer parts.
Have you tried the Corsair RX fans? Wonder if they are any better. Thanks for the vid!
My previous gen LEDs started burning out and showing wonky colors so I was thinking about picking these up. The problem is, I've got 9 fans, not counting the 360 AIO. I only need a single controller, 2 long cables and 2 short cables, what sucks is that there is no financially sensible of purchasing that configuration without a lot of leftover hardware or paying an arm and a leg.
How about testing the new RX series of Corsair fans.
this just saved me plenty of money, going back to review my ideas for case fans, thought they maybe a golden ticket to simplicity, I love STS form getting to the truth of the matter and pointing in the right direction, thanks for the vid its helped greatly with this new build I'm doing,
Subscribed for not sucking up to companies making lousy products.
Thanks for making this review. I was searching everywhere for this. You are definitely right, no channel has made any coverage of the new Corsair fans, AIOs, Link system, recent iCue stability and features, or for the new Link enabled Hydro X parts….
I myself plan to use them in an overkill custom loop build, but I was curious on their performance. Looks like they are not any better than the previous LL120’s I owned… if not maybe even worse.
Corsair definitely could do better with the lighting. A better diffuser would help, or increasing LED count and brute forcing it.
Considering i have AC and I just slide open a bit the glass when playing something heavy. I gonna buy these for Decoration lol.
I'd get lyam Lee since I love their design. However most of my set up is corsair already so gotta reduce too much background apps
My new system this year will be without any Corsair products. iCue is sometimes a real pain.
Corsair charges you $20 for replacement cables, EACH.. stay away from them asap
Got these as in take fans of my Lian Li 011 and they work perfectly fine. RGB is beautiful, fans are spinning at 1000 rpm and are near silent, Icue works without issues for me, yes I have a full water cooled system and don't need super high performance. These are excellent for my use case.
The 3500x case already comes with the iCUE link fans, the controller, and the neccessary cables to connect other ones, but buying the fans to DIY would of course cost more. and I do agree those corsair iCUE RGB fans are very expensive compared to the other brands, but corsairs fans have specific colors that stand out compared to other fans which makes mix matching a bad thing to do if you care about the aesthetics.
excellent comparison and measurements approach.
keep in mind that this fan does not compete with any of the fans you compared it to, it actually competes with the lian-li uni v2 fans lineup.
pushing air efficiently isn't the strong suit of both model lineups, its primarily focused on cable management (since both are being sold solely on the "1 cable to power all" approach).
the problem being is that when you actually go 140mm, because there are not that many good options out there except for Noctua, or if you want LED's then there really is no other option out there except for corsair or Lian-Li, that some buyers would just buy these types of fans regardless of their performance because they would just be "good enough".
personally i'd prefer convenience over performance and noise, which is why i went all out 140mm in the first place, and why i'm not considering the QX140 fans since i already have their H170I ICUE LINK AIO (which kinda comes with everything you need if you want to add 3 more fans in the front and 1 in the back).
the pricing for any PC fan right now though is absolutely insane, nearly 50$ for a single fan is midday robbery...
heck even Noctua's 40mmx20mm fans are overpriced as heck at 25$ per fan.
i'm a HUGE Noctua Fan (no pun intended) but unfortunately when it comes to cable management its really messy to work with oldschool style wired PWM fans lol
Thank you for covering these! I could not find anyone else reviewing the fan itself. So glad I bought the Arctic Freezer 3 and outfitted it with 6 P12 maxes instead.
Thanks for the video, it was lots of good info. Your closing thoughts were insightful for me because I am actually planning to build a large system that should easily be able to cool with these "bad" fans at low RPM. I am mostly interested because of the aesthetics and the cable management. I understand I will pay a premium for that, but I am not going for a hyper-optimized build this time. My biggest concern that you raised was with the limited LED quantity, as that will certainly diminish the aesthetic aspect.
man I'm glad they changed it out, my mobo has no ARGB headers and I'm slowly upgrading my gear
I was originally thinking getting Corsair QX fans for my first build
But based on the research and suggestions from my friends and how it looks like on H6 flow, I’ll rather go for Lian Li’s Uni Fans, but the AL V2s since I find SL V2 version look less appealing
If you use an AMD CPU and want the best looking build there is nothing better on the market, also the new fan price is 99 euro for 3 fans with the controller and with the new firmware now support up to 12 devices on every port 24 in total.
I stopped buyiny anything from Corsair after my 2018 build. The icue software, lame fans and proprietary cables killed it for me.
Yeah agree 100%. Don't know why people still bother with them. The only thing I can say that is good from corsair is power supplies.
I still have a few ql and ml fans I use for cosmetic reasons. I know they suck and whenever they start to give issues, they are gone.
@@DiceAirtheir cases are pretty good too (the ones without fans)
I bought these for one specific reason; consolidation of cable management. I have a 5000X from corsair and cabling 10 fans to a commander to lighting node to another fan controller is a thing of nightmares in that midsized case. I can barely shut the door. I have a 4090 so I have a large psu that comes with lots of cables for the pcie connections, and until I can get my 12+4 cable from corsair to consolidate more cables. I bought these before seeing this review so I am a bit disappointed in the testing results. Yours was the only video really showing its true flaws.
Kind of sad that I didn't see this before I bought a single RGB fan from corsair for my case. It's supposed to be the one bit of bling in itc cause the rest of my fans are buried in the back of the case behind mesh or are in area's you'll never see them so the only RGB you can see is on my pumps and on that one corsair fan.
no cable was my expectation. so I ordered an expensive pair. then my solo QX120 arrived and oops, there was a cable in the box!
Are you sure that you didn't get bad fans? I've seen at least two other performance tests that showed they perform well enough - not nearly as poor your tests indicate. Your diagram indicates that it only has 12 LEDs but don't forget that there are LEDs in the center of the fan plus the other side. That's the 34 LEDs in total.
This video is a scam....
So I bought all of this a month ago, and it all comes with 90' cables, and the Single indeed comes with a 90' cable as well, and even the Link AIO comes with a controller as well. sadly your video is out of date on this, as I did in fact think the same even ordered extra cables. So I don't know when they made the Silent change but I got month a month ago, and it has everything, you will need in the boxes.
I just found your channel searching for reviews for the peerless assassin and It's like I found a hidden gem, your work is really great hope you get to the point where you have the funding for the more "scientific gear" but even without it your way is totally fine and we like it.
Subscribed!❤
The main complaint of the first half of this video seems to be "You have to buy more fans." The latter half is much more compelling. I recently built with the QX fans and 3 RX fans sitting behind a radiator out of sight. I chose them primarily because of the LINK system and I feel like the RGB is fine. I knew it was expensive, but I build a new PC once every so many years and the fans are always the biggest pain-point to me. Anyway, had I seen this video first, I might have reconsidered the LINK system or maybe just went with the RX fans throughout, since they're cheaper and don't waste space with the RGB ring.
Having said that, you should also test the RX version. Again, I would assume they perform better, but of course never know.
wish I had seen this 3 months ago, now I have 3 sets of 3 for my build that don't seem to be up for the job of cooling my water system.😭
Great review calling a spade a spade is doing a great service for the pc building community! Corsair needs to just scrap this line of fans and start over.
I mean... Yeah you can count them, but it doesn't look... bad...? I mean it just looks good in a weird Corsair style. I cannot describe it but, just like how I adore the QLs, where you can also count the LEDs, I kinda adore these ones as well.
I guess it depends on the observer. Nowadays I usualy measure ARGB "Quality" by how "fluent" the transition is. If you can count them, it's not going to be particularly fluent cause you don't have enough to prevent stutter. I guess this is a design choise that everybody needs to decide for himself
But I never assumed there are people out there that enjoy that older "countable" LEDs style. Gonna keep that in mind
well its bad considering its 30€ per fan. i can get 3 rgb fans from arctic for the same price... while also perfoming better lmao
Very glad I saw this, so thank you! Currently planning a new build, while maintaining my previous (which has corsair fans & aio which i’m about to replace). Although RGB can be pretty, i’d rather spend all that money on a better CPU or GPU. I Don’t spend my time staring at the case after all 😂
Corsair turned me against RGB, I had 10 QL 120's with 2 Commander Pro's and at the time the Corsair GPU and CPU Water blocks and Reservoir. The wiring was what turned me against it. To upgrade to the LINK setup, would cost me around 350quid, just for the fans, that's basically a CPU or almost 40% of a 4080 Super....I ended up getting 10 Arctic P12's for 45quid and they daisy chain, ye I lost a lot of RGB, but tbh I am loving the new look of my PC, only RGB is the RAM, GPU and the AIO, which I set the colour's by using the Hardware profile and uninstalled all the RGB software :D
Nice job on this review. I don't know what's been going on with Corsair, but they've just been constantly making a lot of boneheaded stupid mistakes lately. I've had several bad products from them over the last couple years.
Such as the optical k100. Great idea, until you find out that the actuation distance is so small and the springs so loose that the weight of your fingers barely resting on top of them while gaming is enough trigger them, causing constant accidental key presses that actually cost you screw ups in game. And the top function row, bunched up so close to the number keys that it's really easy to accidentally trigger function keys any time you use the top row. I can't count the number of times I accidentally hit F11 simply by quickly flicking a finger over to hit backspace and barely grazing F11 in the process. Worst keyboard I've ever used. I tried everything to get used to that keyboard from using a wrist rest (which I never usually use), to changing the way I hold my hands while typing. And why? Because Corsair desperately wanted to chase the "fastest switch on the market" sales pitch. Even at the cost of the functionality of the keyboard itself. After 2 years, I finally gave up and bought a Wooting analog keyboard instead. So glad to finally be rid of that Corsair keyboard. Nice switches, terrible implementation, awful keyboard layout. Lighting implementation was really good though and I miss my volume wheel, but those were the only two things I liked. But I needed it to be a good keyboard first and foremost and that's where it failed miserably. So it had to go.
Bought an iCUE Nexus specifically for the K100, specifically for hardware statistics monitoring. You know, for the reason the device was marketed and sold. Except, it turned out that there were very few stats you could actually monitor. To the point that the display was virtually useless. You couldn't even monitor RAM usage. You could get a readout for your RAM timings, but nothing for the actual RAM usage. Why in the world would I ever need to constantly know what my RAM timings are? That's a set and forget BIOS setting. Again, great device idea, boneheadedly stupid implementation made all the worse because even with lots of users all complaining to Corsair for years about the lack of options (a lot of users especially complaining about the lack of RAM usage stastics as being an insultingly basic function not to include) Corsair never updated nor expanded the Nexus functionality and refused to open iCUE up to the community by providing an API the community could use to make what they needed themselves. You know, the kind of thing even Logitech did back with the G510 and G19 keyboards they made over a decade ago. I've now gotten rid of the Nexus and bought the Gskill WigiDash instead and use it as an AIDA64 sensor panel. Which works so much better than the Nexus ever did and actually fulfills it's role as an actual sensor display.
And these are only two examples of the failures I've experienced with Corsair's products lately. I don't know who they've hired to be their product manager for the last several years, but I've not been impressed with their products lately. Always on the cusp of genius, yet always fail due to the most shortsighted and stupidly boneheaded decisions that end up crippling their products to uselessness. And the reason I keep using the word boneheaded, is because these failures are the type that should be so easily avoidable that it boggles the mind that they keep screwing up in this way. These fans are just another example. A brilliantly designed interconnect system marred by an absolutely terrible and useless fan. And the thing that boggles the mind in this case, is that Corsair actually knows how to make good fans. So how the hell could they allow this to happen?
About the only things Corsair makes that I still trust, is their RAM and their headsets. And while I've liked their PSUs in the past, with how bad my experiences have been lately and the recent patterns of behavior with their products, I'm at my point where when it comes time for me to update my PSU, I'm probably going to avoid Corsair. Corsair just isn't the enthusiast community embracing company they used to be anymore. Too focused on the chasing trends and buzzwords rather than trying to make good reliable, well considered products. And too quick to find ways to nickel and dime you, rather than including everything you need for the interconnect ecosystem they want you to adopt (like forcing you to have to buy a simple cable separately rather than including one in the expensive kit you just bought). I'm not saying I'm assuming their PSU's suck now. I'm saying this constant and repeated behavior by Corsair over the last several years has eroded my trust to the point where I am now looking elsewhere first, because I'm tired of getting burned by boneheaded product decisions and botched implementations. The Corsair iCUE Link QX120 RGB is just another example in the perpetuation of this trend.
I still think the Lian Li SL infinity is the best looking fan you can get.
They sound like crap though.
I can totally understand why you are frustrated about not having additional cables for various configs in the box. But IMHO, excluding the cost overhead, I like the idea of only buying what you need. We have soooo much e-waste with our tech that I am happy to avoid creating more if I can do so.
Agreed, already had 2 fans die on me within 6 months of use. Also, the software is always breaking and the only solution I have is to run the PC without iCue running, just in device hardware mode. Corsair should realllllllly put some more effort into their software issues.
Coming from someone who’s been a corsair fan boy every since I used one of their AIOs, I’m not buying these as I’ve already spent quite a bit of money on their ML 120 RGB Elites. These QXs looked a bit too flashy and a bit too good to be true when they came out, and it looks like my suspicions were correct. Dropped a well deserved like, great video! Keep criticizing some of their other overpriced products. It really needs the attention.
I have purchased a icue link 150i tha have qx fan and now i am thinking to change all my ql120 fans , but RX are looking much better than QX beside that they have one rgb line on the side ....but man QX are so expensive 170€ for 3 fan pack !!!! And they dont have lcd as lian li wtf corsair
thank you i just ordered 3 of the 3 pack for my new build :D
i spent 200 bucks on 4 corsair ql 140mm fans for my build less then 6 months ago and the stupid things white leds are already going yellowish. i will never buy another corsair fan again. im going to get the be quiet light wings soon
Argus Monitor is fan controlling software that has an RGB option as well. I use that instead of iCue to control my HD120's and H150I RGB AIO. iCue is way too bloated.
Im so glad i found your channel
Any product with non-standard connectors gets nothing but a raspberry from me. I'm glad you feel the same way. The noise results just made me chuckle.
Love the brutal honesty man "They suuck"
These fans are not performance oriented, I see no problem with the data. The performance oriented ones are the LX series, with extremely high static pressure, useful in custom loop configurations.
Thanks a lot for saving me $140 bro. You really earned the sub!
Arctic P12 are good. I'm running P14s. Great fans.
should try their rx fans they just released as they claim these are the best fans they've made.
Great video! I'm happy with my 9x Lian Li SL Infinity fans :)
I'm going for these too, together with the LCD display ones (which requires a separate controller). Although, i was in doubt to get those corsair's as i am already in iCue anyways because of my keyboard, PSU and fans of another PC that i connected to this one lol (well, controller wise).
I have a system full of these and I have to admit they are indeed overpriced.
Got 9 QX120 and 3 QX140 and I went from a system full of Phanteks T30 fans and the temperature difference is actually very small and insignificant even with my RTX 4090 and 7800X3D under a very heavy workload over many hours.
I have already used them in a build with 6 fans and did not see a big difference there either when compared to 6 T30 fans.
The difference might be more noticeable in a system with very few fans.
Don't get me wrong the Phanteks T30 is the superior fan and at a much lower price too when it comes to the most important thing a fan is for which is cooling down your components.
The QX series is not the go to fans for anybody that wants great price to performance, I only got them because I use them in a showcase build and they are very good looking in my opinion.
Less wires to deal with when connecting the fans and the icue link h150i is easily integrated into the same ecosystem so I can avoid the cable clutter on that too. The hub that controls everything only uses a single usb header on the motherboard which is nice for me so I can connect the AX1600i to the other header I have available without using any adapters.
The fans also connect together without any or much of a gap between them so everything put together it actually makes a huge difference to the aesthetics of the build if this is the number 1 priority.
I have never encountered any issue with the icue software not working and I have been using it since 2019 but I have owned very few corsair components over the years so it has not been extensively used before recently.
The biggest issue with these fans right now is the price point in my opinion. The entire icue link setup cost me roughly 800$ (Not AX1600i included ofc)
Both my RTX 4090 and 7800X3D easily operates at 25 - 30 degrees lower temp than the limits all day long at the quiet preset on all of the fans and the pump but other much cheaper fans would also do the same.
This is a waste of money if you only need performance and nothing else!
There are many other things that are just as big of a waste of money.
One example is the Asus Rog Matrix 4090 which costs twice as much as the cheaper RTX 4090 variants and on a good day you could expect a few percent more performance for a 100% price increase.
This is a hobby just like everything else. Some people will happily pay a fortune for an old classic car which is objectively worse than a brand new one and an audiophile will spend every dime on silver plated cables.
None of it may be good value or a responsible way to spend the paycheck but everybody are happy to go back to their hobby at the end of the day.
Life is simpler and more visually pleasing without rgb
GREAT rant. Corsair will never get a single dollar from me these days, all their stuff (Except their RM and higher PSUs) are utter junk.
I agree about their fans being junk. They however make rather nice cases (although a bit too iCue centric these days - I don't care though, I still rock the same Corsair case I bought in 2016) and nice PSUs (I have the HX1500i, great piece of equipment), and I've been buying their RAM sticks for more than a decade now in several builds without a single issue whatsoever. Lately I bought a kit of their new non binary memory sticks in the Dominator Titanium flavour and it's been just perfect, great capacity, great performance, cool operation, no issues at all. At 2 x 48 GB capacity and 6600 MT/s, I had AFAIK exactly three choices on the market: Corsair Dominator Titanium, Corsair Vengeance or G.Skill Trident Z5, and the Corsair ones were the only option with all-metal heatsinks for a non-RGB build, so I would not call that "junk".
6 months late, the 3 pack starter kit comes with a 600mm 90 degree cable and a 150mm expansion cable.
I was interested in this series a couple of months ago, but decided to go with a LS720. It's been great. I didn't really find any review for the QX120s or the iCue Link AIOs, but they just seem overpriced as hell. Now thanks to this video, I really know that I got lucky by not buying this crap. I do like the connection system they made though.
I can't think of a single fan Corsair has released that was a solid, quiet, performer. They've instead relied on gimmicks, looks, and marketing to sell their fans. Not everything they make is over-priced and under-performing, but a lot of it is. They ride on the coat-tails of having managed an Apple-like fan base (no pun intended). Any corsair product I can think of almost has a better performing, lower cost, equivalent from another brand. PSUs, RAM and PC cases are the only exceptions that come to mind; Corsair tends to do the well, and at somewhat reasonable price-points (but let's not forget that Corsair led the charge when it came to putting air-restricting glass front panels on some of their cases too).
Hope the 140s qre better I bougt 13 of those …
4:20 six wing design?? You have the thing center frame, count them again. You know, there is a handy trick for this, don't talk about it like that, then your inability to count won't matter. You can say 'multiwing' since it communicates almost the same thing. The 'wing' count here is padding anyway, no one gives a poop about that, skip it.
Thank you for this.
Budget brand quality but asking premium price
It's just so sad to see that evryone praises these fans like they are actually good. While in real life they are worse than Arctic p12s which kost 10 times less.
Corsair No reversible fans… got to go to Lian Li and pay for the technology IP for reverse fan design! 🤣
I just really, really like the look of them.
Forcing you into using their proprietary shit including some cables not included by default and running their bloatware is disgusting. Just fucking use standard PWM and ARGB headers, or at least make it an option. I'm fine with fan-to-fan connection using proprietary standard if I also have an option to connect all of these fans individually to the motherboard. I'll never buy anything from corsair, all they do is mediocre overpriced products with shitload of rgb put everywhere they can (and as we can see with these fans they can’t even make that right), form over function.
Hey you are actually watchable, nice, I like it
the Lian Li win this race by a long shot and I noticed the icue app draws a lot of power and recourses from my rig
They look nice indeed ,my QL 120 fans already have broken leds , some of the leds instead of white they showing purple !!! I have 30€ 3 fans pack from China from 2020 they still working 😅 ....so a little bit disappointed, i want to buy another brad but i have to invest a lot in keyboard mouse fans AIO rams , just not worth to replace everything because of those corsairs fans , everything inside my pc its corsair ......
i thought there was something wrong with my build, i couldn't comprehend that such expensive fans are performing like this, so much noise and shit temperature, RIP my money
Currently using QX120's in my first ever build. Love them.
They are awesome fans! Congrats on the new build, enjoy!
I think the QX are definetly over priced, but with the RX fans u can get it for a kinda good price.
Because of your review, I cancelled my order for a Corsair 360 aio. I’m not a huge Corsair fan. I honestly think they’re a terrible greedy company but I need a 360 aio for my build. Sadly the Arctic Liquid Freezer III is too thick for my pc case. So I decided to go with the Corsair cooler because it’s on sale for $129.
You just saved me $129 and I have to remind myself from here on out, Corsair will always sell shit (minus their PSU) products.
Still the best ecosystem.
9 fans in my system, loudest one is the single 120 corsair
well it's corsair...
here is a very low quality 30 dollar product with tons of bloatware bundled with it for just 299,99€
I expected a bit of brand-tax, but not to that extent
@@STSYTwell then take a look at their latest product stack. they want a HUNDRED AND FIFTY Euros for THREE FANS and a small RGB Controller.
this is cents worth of material and single digit dollars worth of labour for a 1000% price increase.
Yeah I’m gonna get lian li tl fans if I want daisy chaining rgb fans. And they are cheaper…
Now I really wonder how their RX140 and RX120 fans perform.
"Climax of sadness." I busted out laughing at this. What an awesome line.
I have a decked out 5000X case that I don’t use anymore. The old QL fans are cool looking but man do they perform like trash
Thanks dude! I was considering buying some QX120 and they are garbage and very expensive. I will got for the Sp120, cheaper. Much better for my pocket.