Closer Examination

The fans come in a cardboard blister inlay packaging that will help protect them during shipping and handling in most cases. The cables are tucked into a lower compartment. You will notice immediately that the fan rotor is a frosted white and not translucent in color as with most if not all other LED fans. We saw this on the other Corsair RGB fans as well, and it worked out great once the LEDs were powered on. The plastic used to make this rotor is very unique and helps diffuse light very nicely. A lot of thought has gone into the design of these RGB fans, and it paid off.

The LEDs in question are centered around the hub, with one per quadrant for a total of four addressable RGB LEDs. The fans themselves adopt a black and white color design thus, which will go well with PC DIY builds to begin with, let alone after the customization available via the RGB LEDs has been put to use. There are arrows on one side of the frame to show the direction of airflow through the fan and the blades' rotation. The corners are closed, so it is a good thing that there are vibration-dampening pads pre-installed.


The rubber pads here are different in that the fan's corners are entirely made out of the material and have corner caps. The caps are removable and can be replaced by caps in other colors (black being the default and options of white, blue, and red being available) at an optional cost. I demonstratively put one of each color on the ML PRO (non-RGB) fan in the picture above. The LEDs being on the hub means that the fan hub is larger in size than average, measuring in at 1.7" in diameter, which results in ever-so-slightly shorter blades compared to the non-lit ML120 PRO fans.


Each fan is rated for 0.225 A (2.7 W), which is different than the 0.219 A (2.63 W) mentioned on the product page. The discrepancy is small yet troubling, and since the value on the sticker is that of a third-party certification agency, we will go by it. As with the other Corsair RGB fans, the LEDs are powered directly through the PSU (via the fan LED hub). In practice, each fan had a maximum operating current draw of 0.062 A (0.74 W), which goes well with the 0.072 A rating I was given as a value for just the fan. Peeling off the sticker, we can see the power distribution for the four LEDs and the four wires for the PWM motor here. There are two fan cables per fan, and both are unsleeved and employ the flat, ribbon-style wiring we saw before with other Corsair fans. The first is the fan's power cable for the motor that runs the fan; it is 14" long and ends in a standard 4-pin fan header. It will attach to any 4-pin fan header on your motherboard or a fan controller capable of PWM control. The second is the LED cable that plugs into the fan LED hub, and it is also 14" long. There is a hook at the end for it to lock into place, and you can remove it also by pressing down on this hook.

The ML120 PRO RGB fans use the same excellent magnetic levitation bearing based on Sunon's MagLev Motor Technology, so that is always good to see. This was impressive with the older ML PRO fans and hopefully remains the same here, wherein the bearing lifts off the fan's shaft when provided +12 VDC, which results in absolutely no bearing noise as it interacts with nothing but air. As such, PWM control is strongly recommended over voltage control here because a lower voltage may not have the bearing lift off completely or as intended.