Even the best computer cases can be improved in some fashion. We’ve reviewed several cases recently that have had great cooling abilities due to their use of 120mm fans. Though the fans worked well, there’s always room to improve. Even if you don’t have a top end case, as long as your lacklustre enclosure has 120mm fan mounts the product we’re reviewing will have something to offer. Manufactured by GELID Solutions, these 120mm fans give you a quieter way to keep your case cool while adding a bit of green glow action with a UV light.
Features and Specifications
The GELID Wing 12 Gamer 120mm case fan are a new addition to GELID’s line of cooling products. These UV reactive fans offer features either not seen on their contemporaries, or only seen on more expensive case fans. The main features of the Wing 12 fans are as follows.
- Nanoflux Bearing (NFB)
- Optimized Winglet Fan Blades
- Waterproof & Dustproof
- Long Lifetime (100,000h MTTF at 40°C)
- Silicone Fan Mounts
- Fan Speed Control
A whole lot more information can be found on the product home page. Basically these are quiet mounted, fully adjustable, high quality fans that come in at a reasonable price.
When it comes to pricing we turn to our friends at NCIX.com, as they are the major dealer selling GELID products in North America. When searching through their catalogue for other speed adjustable 120mm fans we found that the GELID Wing 12 came at $18.99 CDN, which is $3 CDN cheaper then the competing product from Silverstone. If these fans perform as well as one would expect, this could make for a very interesting review. First let’s take a look at what makes these fans work.
The Fan Glows Green.
The GELID Wing 12 Gamer 120mm case fan is a fairly typical looking 120mm fan, with a few minor differences. The fan impeller has a total of 9 blades, which are oriented in such a way to reduce noise while still moving a decent volume of air. The blades and impeller are all a colour that can only be described as “radioactive” green, lending to the fact the they are UV reactive and will glow in the same green tone when exposed to a UV cold cathode.
The tips of the fan blades have little wings on them; another little tweak that should reduce or eliminate noise generated from wind turbulence between the blade tips and the frame. The centre hub of the fan is completely visible, allowing you to see what drives the fan. Rather than using a standard ball bearing or fluid bearing setup, the GELID Wing 12 uses what they call a nanoflux bearing. This is essentially a single bearing driven by several magnets. Due to this design the impeller is also easily removed, allowing you to . . . clean it I guess . . . or just show off that you can remove your fan blade.
The Accessories Don’t Really Glow At All
As I’m sure you noticed, the GELID Wing 12 is powered using a 3-pin power connector. Unfortunately no 3-pin to 4-pin adaptor is included, but if you want the fan at full speed all the time and have your own adapter you can hook up the fan and go. However for those of us who like to do a little tweaking, GELID included a variable speed fan controller with the Wing 12 fan. You still need a 3-pin to 4-pin adaptor plug it in though, or a free fan header on your motherboard.
The way the cable for the speed control is designed, you can mount it almost anywhere independent of the fan. To facilitate this GELID has included some double-sided tape so you can mount the controller anywhere there’s an open surface. Having already had a bad experience with double sided tape, I would recommend using Velcro or something less permanent. As for mounting the fans themselves, four silicone mounting plugs are included. These are used to dampen vibration noise and prevent it from being transfer from the fans to the case.
Installation Was A Snap
We installed 3 of the GELID Wing 12 120mm fans into the following system.
- AMD Phenom 9850 2.5GHz Quad Core CPU
- Asus M3A32-MVP Deluxe/WiFi-AP 790FX Motherboard
- Corsair Dominator DDR2 4GB PC2-8500 RAM Kit
- ZOTAC GeForce GTX 260 AMP! Edition Video Card
- Western Digital VelociRaptor 300GB 10000rpm SATA2 Hard Drive
- Lian Li MAXIMA Force 650W Extreme Power Supply
- Antec P182 Advanced Super Mid Tower Case
- Cooler Master Hyper 212 CPU Cooler
Now I’m sure you have two question on you mind as to this choice of components. The second one we’ll answer when we start testing, but the first one we’ll look at here. Why did I only use 3 fans when the Antec P182 has four fan slots. Well the reason for that is the P182 only comes with 3 fans installed, and I wanted to make this an apples to apples comparison. Let’s see how everything fit together.
One of my concerns with using the Antec P182 was that it has some interesting characteristics with it’s fan mounts. The top has a panel that is thicker then the standard sheet metal that a case a constructed of, and the front has a specialized plastic fan mount. Still I was able to remove the fan mount, and use the silicone pegs on all the fans. Your mileage may vary depending on how your case is constructed, but the fans themselves are designed to be as easy to install as possible.
Now I wouldn’t recommend dangling your fan speed controllers out of your case is such a fashion, but if you want to you can. This is a example of what I meant when I said that the controllers work independently of the fans. The cable that connects everything is wired in a sort of loopback, allowing you to mount the controllers in any position that is convenient. So with everything snugly mounted, it’s time to test the whole rig out and see if the effort was worth it.
Performance
Why did I use an Antec case with Antec fans known for already being very quiet? Well I wanted to put the GELID Wing 12 fans up against the best hardware I have. If they faire well against such a challenge you should get an impression of how well they’ll faire in your rig, be it awesome or awful.
As with any cooling review, the first set of tests we ran through for the GELID Wing 12 fans was to see how they affected thermal performance. To perform these tests, we set the fans to three speed settings and recorded the resulting idle and load temperatures. Load conditions were generated using the software program OCCT. This particular piece of software can be used to generate load on both CPU and RAM, pushing the CPU to 100% usage across all available cores and sending traffic to RAM.
Upon first glance, it would appear that the GELID Wing 12 fans were beat out by the Antec stock fans by a slim margin. The GELID fans held their own at Medium speed, but were otherwise beaten by the Antec fans by a factor of 1°C in all other tests. Admittedly this is a statistically insignificant number, as 1°C of temperature difference has little to no impact on overall system performance. While it may appear that the Antec fans beat out the GELID fans, even by a small margin, they really didn’t. This is especially true when you take into account our next set of tests.
The thermal tests put the Antec stock fans in our test rig and the GELID Wing 12 cases in a neck-and-neck race for cooling supremacy, so it should be the acoustic and noise tests that place either product on the winner’s podium. Without gushing too much, I think it’s safe to say that the GELID fans are the clear winner here. The reasoning behind that is simple.
Though the GELID and Antec fans are similar in thermal performance, the GELID fans are noticeably quieter. This isn’t just a numbers game though; our ears also say that the GELID fans are perceptibly quieter then our test rig. The most impressive performance delta is at the high end of the scale, and unsurprisingly the medium speed setting is where the best balance of noise and performance is found. However it’s the low end where the difference is made clear. The difference in noise levels may only be 1dBA on paper, but that’s enough to our ears to make the GELID near silent while still maintaining excellent cooling performance. The Antec fans on the other hand still had an audible din at their lowest speed. Imagine how much a set of GELID Wing 12 fans would improve a case with really loud or poorly performing 120mm fans.
Final Thoughts and Conclusion
GELID keeps impressing us with the products they are putting out. The Wing 12 120mm case is no different. This product manages to live up to easily live up to the claims made by GELID. The construction of the fan is of a premium quality, with well though out and implemented features. The included accessories pretty well cover exactly what you’d want from a cooling fan. There’s even some added pizzazz in the form of some UV reactive components.
The only gripes I can come up with are more of the nit-picky variety then anything actually wrong with the product. At the most, I would say they are suggestions for a future revision of this product. The first is to loose the permanent double-sided tape that’s used to mount the fan speed controllers, and replace it with some Velcro or something that can be removed should these fans be moved around or (shock) replaced at some point. The second would be to also include a 3-pin to 4-pin adapter for power, though that would probably raise the price a few cents.
In the end, we have a simple product with a simple outcome to the review. The GELID Wing 12 120mm case fans may not be the absolute best fans in terms of raw performance, but when it comes to balancing performance and annoyance they are head and shoulders above many other fans out there. GELID has managed to bundle these high performing fans with a package of components that make this a great addition to any performance system you are looking to silence.
Pros
- Well constructed
- Silent operation
- Inexpensive
- Great accessory package
Cons
- No extra power adaptor
- Need less permanent mounting for speed controller
Overall Rating: 9.5/10.0
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GELID Wing 12 Gamer 120mm Case Fan Photo Gallery
