Prolimatech Vortex Fan Reviews

Prolimatech Vortex 14 Aluminium Series Red LED Fan

Currently the Aluminium series Vortex 140mm fans are available with red and green LEDs. Both cost the same price and currently they retail for £22 in the UK and €25 in Europe. Even by premium fan pricing, these are expensive. And they are also pretty noisy, noticeable “more noisy” with the fan grilles attached as these though the decibel readings are more or less the same. This is because the fan grilles change the pitch of the noise without actually raising the noise level. Yet I still feel that the Vortex 14 Aluminium fans are pretty awesome, mainly because they have very good performance and a fully aluminium design which is very attractive.

Pros

• Performance is excellent
• Aluminium construction gives a unique look and feel
• Accessory Pack is extensive

Cons

• Noise – Grille also makes this worse
• Price is high, you are paying for the high quality materials
• Weak LEDs
• Grille can make mounting on heatsinks difficult, needs to be removed for doing a push-pull config
• Unsleeved/non-black cables from motor and in accessory pack

eTeknix says: If you are looking for some fans that are radically different to anything else on the market then the Vortex 14 Aluminium series are a great choice. Their performance is top notch but that does come with a noise penalty and the fan grille can be inconvenient at times.

Prolimatech Vortex 14 Blue and Blue LED Fans

The Vortex 14 Blue and Blue LED fans cost €10/£12 and €9/£12 respectively. This means they certainly aren’t expensive but they also aren’t the cheapest 140mm fans on the market. With them only running at 1000RPM they have limited flexibility and are only really useful for a case fan usage or with heatsinks that do not require high RPM fans. Yet they provided a very competent level of performance at 1000RPM and are very quiet too plus the choice of plain red/blue or LED red/blue gives you quite a lot of aesthetic flexibility.

Pros

• Performance at rated speeds
• Low noise
• Flexible colour/LED choices

Cons

• Unsleeved motor cable and accessory cable
• Only 1000RPM

eTeknix says: If you are looking for some reasonably priced quiet case fans that have good airflow performance and come in a variety of colours and LED options then the Vortex 14 fans are a very good option. They do not have ground-breaking acoustic or cooling performance but they are just solid products for the price point. These are definitely worth considering if you need some 140mm case fans.

Prolimatech Vortex 12 Blue LED Fan

Finally we have the Prolimatech Vortex 12 Blue LED fans and these cost £11/€8. While the price isn’t high I found these fans quite difficult to be inspired by. Their performance was average both in terms of noise and cooling performance. They came with a decent accessory pack and had particularly vibrant LEDs – that being one of their strong points.

Pros

• Reasonable price
• Strong LEDs

Cons

• Average acoustic and thermal performance
• Lack of attention to detail on cable sleeving

eTeknix says: With such a crowded-out 120mm fan market the Prolimatech Vortex 12 Blue LED fans did little to stand out other than having particularly nice looking bright blue LEDs that are enhanced greatly by the translucent blades. Despite that, these fans are nothing but average for the money. If you can pick up a good multi-buy or discount deal on a few of these fans they’d be good enough for usage as case fans (with the low noise adapters) or on some radiators/heatsinks but otherwise I’d recommend considering other options as there are many better ones out there.

Thank you to Overclockers UK and CaseKing for providing us with these review samples.