Introduction

The Scythe brand has been known to TechPowerUp readers for a while now, especially if they have read our excellent CPU cooler reviews where Scythe tends to offer good products with bang-for-your-buck value. My first interaction with the brand was via their co-branded Gentle Typhoon fans: made by Nidec-Servo and licensed to be sold by Scythe around the world until it was not. It led to other resellers coming up with options to replace what was then regarded the best static pressure optimized fan for PC watercooling, be it in the form of their own Gentle Typhoon fans or making new fans altogether. This was a while back, however, and Scythe has been working on their own fans since. Today, we take a look at one of them, the Kaze Flex 120 RGB that aims to follow their cooler product philosophy as well. Thanks to them for providing review samples to TechPowerUp!


As the name suggests, this is an update on their Kaze Flex fans with an RGB implementation for customers wanting it. There are three models under this name: the SU1225FD12LR-RDP, SU1225FD12MR-RHP, and SU1225FD12HR-RNP. They are differentiated by their rated speed (800, 1200, and 1800 RPM respectively). I was sent the 1200 RPM fans, which in hindsight was something I should have checked for to request the 1800 RPM fans instead, but this does tell us what the manufacturer believes is the popular fan/product more often than not. As with the Alphacool Eiszyklon Aurora LT RGB fan we saw earlier, the Scythe Kaze Flex 120 RGB fan (1200 RPM model) appears to target a similar audience prioritizing noise over pure performance, and with some RGB lighting to boot. The European market is particular about this relative to most of the Americas and Asia, so it will be interesting to see how these two fans go up against each other as well.

Specifications

Packaging and Accessories

This is as retail a packaging as I have seen for a fan, and I can definitely imagine it hanging off a metal rod in a store somewhere via the plastic casing and hole at the top. The transparent casing means we see a lot of the fan inside, and there are stickers with colors galore to help add more information about the fan. If you were to chance upon this in a store, for example, the packaging does a great job of telling you what the fan is, mentioning all the salient specs and features. A single flap on the top helps keep the contents inside in place, and pulling them out reveals the fan itself.


As it turns out, there was an inlay cardboard piece at the top to contain the fan cables and accessories neatly out of sight. The fan cables are attached to the fan, and Scythe provides two accessories with the Kaze Flex 120 RGB PWM fan—a set of four self-tapping metal screws in black, if you were to use this as a case fan, and an adapter cable to help power the fan straight from the PSU. This adapter cable is unsleeved, goes from a fan header (2-pin for power alone, no PWM control) on one side to a full-size MOLEX adapter on the other, and has a pass-through MOLEX connector, so you do not lose out on an entire MOLEX connector just for a fan. This means you can daisy chain these fans off a single PSU MOLEX connector, say if you had multiples on a radiator, but ideally, you should power and control them off a PWM fan header instead.