Corsair ML120 Pro LED Fan Review

Ever heard about Magnetic Levitation? Well, Corsair is using this interesting technology for its magnetic bearing in their new Corsair ML120 PRO LED fans. This way, the fan should provide longer lifespan and lower noise. After unboxing, the first thing you notice is its extremely stable frame and the build quality. That’s also one of the reasons why the price is so high. Yes, we are talking about premium grade fans. There are four color options available, red, blue, white LED and black without LED. Also available in 120mm and 140mm.

The frame has an extra designed reinforcement ribs on the outside and is quite heavy. The corners are removable and isolated from frame with rubber pads. These prevent vibrations to be transferred to the rest of the the case.  Also it is worth to mention that with speeds under 1000RPM the fan is quiet and producing only very little vibrations. Although, at 12V the situation is completely different as the fan starts to be noticeably louder. Therefore, for users with sensitive ears, not very recommended. On the other side, if you are looking for good performance and don’t mind the noise and higher price, Corsair ML120 PRO may serve you just well for a long time.

Let’s have a closer look at rotor blades. The material is very resistant and sturdy. The blades are big enough and so able to push more air through the radiator even at lower RPM. The design shows that we are looking at the fans that can offer both, high static pressure and high air flow. Of course the RPM are adjustable as the fan is connected with 4 pin PWM cable. There are not many fans on the market that can offer us 400RPM at its lowest voltage. It’s actually nice feature for users who need silent operation during, let’s say, office work or just writing a review like this one.

So what is actually magnetic levitation bearing you may ask? Corsair employs Magnetic Levitation technology in the hub of its new ML series fans, sidestepping friction and wear problems by partially suspending the rotor within a magnetic field. That reduced friction also pays off with increased rotor speeds and lower decibel readings. For example, while most conventional designs top out loud and proud under 2000 RPM, ML120 series fans spin a full 20% faster, up to a heady 2400 RPM.

Technical specifications:

Airflow: 12 – 75 CFM
Static Pressure: 0.2 – 4.2 mmH20
Sound Level: 16 – 37 dBA
Speed: 400 – 2400 RPM
Power Draw: 0.225 A
Fan Size: 120mm x 25mm
Flow Type: Static Pressure
PWM Control: Yes
Warranty: 5 years

Test methodology:

To ensure that the results from one review to another are comparable, the Testing Methodology will be the same throughout all reviews, otherwise we will make a note if somethings changed and keep it separately from other results.

All tests were performed on Bench-table with a room ambient temperature of 22- 23°C and if temperature changes we will add delta T °C to the results.

Warm Up:

Before testing we run 10 minutes of Prime95 followed by 30 minutes of idling. This warm up period was done at stock CPU core frequency.

For noise testing we are using fanless PSU and we don’t use any graphics card. We mostly do fan noise test over night so the room is as silent as possible.

 

Testing system :

Processor: Intel Core i5-4690K

MB: Gigabyte G1.Sniper Z87

SSD: Samsung 830 – 128GB

RAM: 8GB Kingston DDR3-1600

PSU: SilverStone Nightjar 520W Platinum

Bench-table: Cooler Master Test Bench V1.0

OS: MS Windows 10 64bit

Software: OCCT 4.4.1, Easy Tune

 

For testing we used OCCT software and between each test we left the PC at least 15 minutes to rest so that the temperature went back to the IDLE state. Each test lasted for 15 minutes. The resultingtemperature in the tables are the average temperature of all cores. Therefore this results should be considered as indicative only.

For this test we have used Phobya NanoGrease Extreme thermal paste provided by Aquatuning. We have tested following products with Alphacool NexXxoS ST30 Full Copper 120mm radiator in combination with Alphacool Repack – Single Laing D5 – Dual 5,25 Bay Station and Thermaltake W2 CPU Water Block. Fans were in push configuration. The noise level was measured from distance of 30cm, thus we can get more precise values.

Test results:

Intel® Core™ i5-4690K Processor @3.9GHz

Intel® Core™ i5-4690K Processor @3.9GHz

Fan Speed @7V / 12V