Introduction

Quick question—what comes to your mind when you hear the word "Seasonic"? If I were a betting man, I would guess power supplies. Indeed, of the many Seasonic product reviews here, the vast majority happen to be for the brand's excellent PSUs. Seasonic has since branched out to making its own cases and naturally that leads to cooling solutions as well. While we may not have a Seasonic CPU cooler just yet, I was pleasantly surprised to see some impressive looking fans at Computex last year. In fact, the product manager responsible for these fans was so proud that he readily pit them against the best performers on the market. Today we examine the newer ARGB versions of these fans and thanks to Seasonic for providing review samples to TechPowerUp!


Named the Seasonic MagFlow ARGB, this 120 mm fan is clearly being marketed for watercooling if the stock photos on the product page are anything to go by. The MagFlow in the name might make you think there is a magnetic levitation bearing used but rather for the magnets used in the fan daisy-chaining feature on offer. As confusing as it might be, the real selling point here is the use of an LCP (liquid crystalline polymer) rotor for an RGB fan which is a first for me. LCP rotors have been used in top performers we've reviewed over the years such as the Noctua NF-A12x25, the Phanteks T30-120, the Thermaltake TOUGHFAN 12 PRO, and the Lian Li UNI FAN P28. The material itself is part of a bigger puzzle no doubt but this is promising already, especially given the general performance deficit we have with RGB fans compared to non-LED fans. Will the Seasonic MagFlow change things for the better? Let's find out today in our review which begins with a look at the product specifications in the table below.

Specifications

Packaging and Accessories

Seasonic makes the MagFlow ARGB 120 mm fans available as a single pack or a triple pack and I have the latter here. It ships in a large, cubical cardboard box adorned with plenty of branding and illustrations. On the front is the brand logo and product name along with a render of the fan lit up, salient features, as well as compatible LED control systems used by major motherboard manufacturers. More marketing features are listed on the sides and back accompanied by the fan specifications and a list of contents inside the box. A double flap and seals help keep those contents safely in place on their way to you.


Opening the box reveals four individual boxes—one each for the three units which in turn have the fan inside a wax paper wrap and the fourth for the accessories to be used. Seasonic provides a detailed user manual (online copy here) going over the setup and use of the fans, including how to connect multiple fans together easily. There's the expected set of four self-tapping metal screws to install each fan as a case fan and then come the more proprietary cables. These include a 20 cm power cable that magnetically connects to a fan and has a 4-pin PWM and 3-pin ARGB connector on the other end and a second such 45 cm fan-to-fan cable with two power connectors on either end before we get back to normalcy with a 45 cm PWM extension cable and a 45 cm ARGB LED extension cable.


The triple pack also gets an ARGB LED controller which is 56 x 29 x 15.3 mm in size and has a black plastic exterior. On the sides are various I/O options including a 2-pin reset/LED switch to connect to your case, three ARGB output ports, a lighting control button you toggle through different lighting effects with, and then two fixed cables which terminate in full-size SATA for power directly from the PSU, and finally a 3-pin connector to sync the lighting effects with that of your motherboard to keep everything uniform. We do not get double-sided tape to help install the controller behind the motherboard tray or in an accessible spot on the front though.