Corsair QL120 & QL140 iCue RGB Fans Review

How Much Does it Cost?

I’m not going to beat around the bush here, they’re not cheap. A single QL120 RGB LED fan with no hub will set you back £29.91 here in the UK and up to £34.89 for a single QL140 RGB LED fan, ouch. However, the triple pack and double pack are just a dusting past £100 with the included Node Core Hub. You can check the latest prices in the UK here and in the US here. Of course, Corsair makes more affordable fans, but these are their flagship lighting luxury items, and the price reflects that. you don’t need to buy them, but if you do, they’re the best Corsair makes right now.

Overview

I’m a little conflicted with these fans, as I’m not personally a huge purveyor of RGB lighting. I mean, I have RGB lighting throughout my house, and behind my TV, on my keyboard, mouse, in my PC case… OK, so I have it everywhere now that I think about it. However, it’s not all the puking rainbows that you see in our reviews, it’s warm tones and no flashy effects. I think a lot of the time people do fall into the RGB expensive trap, when what they really wanted was just some red LEDs and to save a few quid.

RGB

If, however, you really want to fine-tune every aspect of your RGB life, then the QL120 and larger QL140 really do have more to offer than likely anyone will use. With three 120mm fans, you would have over a hundred individually addressable lights, all with their own effects, transitions, and millions of colours. You could really entertain yourself to death tinkering in iCUE just to find the right sequence. Fortunately, Corsair offers up a boot full of presets that I think will entertain the needs of the many. It’s all surprisingly easy to use too, no doubt thanks to that trick hub they throw in the box. I’ve tinkered with a lot of RGB software over the years and I hate pretty much all of it. Corsair’s iCUE software I don’t hate, it’s clean and relatively simple but still has the advanced stuff should you really need it.

Cables

The only gripe I still have with RGB is it damn near triples the cable count. A simple fan cable now also needs an RGB cable, and that cable goes to a hub, and that hub goes to the motherboard and the PSU. God forbid you buy the pro model and the Node hub goes into the Pro Hub, which has yet another Node and a dozen fans in there. How people get clean builds with all this cable… it’s a black art, it really is. The QL fans could do with slightly longer cables in my opinion, or perhaps just one or two extension cables are recommended if you’re fitting it in a fairly large case.

Should I Buy Them?

Well, that’s about as subjective as they come. I doubt anyone really needs these fans. However, they are a very nice thing to have. The double-sided lighting is brilliant though, and for cases with lots of tempered glass, they’re going to look brilliant from every angle. They’re a bit expensive, but the price is competitive and you really do get a quality product for your investment.