When I think of Be Quiet! fans, like with their coolers, I think of extremely high-quality noise-focused black fans with no lighting. But they don’t stick with that, they have had a few white models in the mix for years now and two years ago they also came out with their Light Wings series of fans which have aRGB lighting. When they launched I didn’t check them out even though I should have but back then when on a call with Be Quiet! I did talk to them about seeing them in white. Well now is the time, their new Light Wings White fans are out and they have both 120mm and 140mm fan sizes as well as regular and high-speed models. Today I’m going to check out both sizes of the high-speed models and see what they are all about.

Product Name: Be Quiet! Light Wings White

Review Sample provided by: Be Quiet!

Written by: Wes Compton

Amazon Affiliate Links:

Light Wings White 120mm PWM high-speed Triple Pack

Light Wings White 140mm PWM high-speed Triple Pack

Photos and Features

Be quiet sent over both their 140mm PWM high-speed and 120mm PWM High-speed Light Wings White fans. Both of the boxes have be quiet’s normal black background with the be quiet logo up in white and orange. In the center, they have a picture of the triple fan of fans which with the white stands out on the black background and has their RGB lighting lit up. Then below that the main Light Wings White model name is in all caps and the specific model is below that in bold. They have the specifications listed on the side which is always great to see for anyone shopping in retail. Then on the back, they just have the UPC and a picture of the fan from the back that also shows off the lighting on the back.

When you open up the Light Wings White boxes, they both have a white box up on top with the be quiet branding and ARGB HUB in the middle but the boxes are sized specifically to the fan sizes to cover the entire top. Under that, each fan is packaged in its own cardboard tray with the wiring tucked up under a cardboard flap that holds the fan in place and keeps it from moving around. These have a small tab on top to help pull them out or you can flip the box upside down.

Both fan sizes have the same contents inside of the box that was on top even though the box is differently sized for each fan size. You have your documentation which includes a legal paper and a paper with a list of what should be inside the box. There is also a large double-sided tape to use on the included hub. There are four small baggies of screws. Three of those, the foggy plastic bags, are all your standard course fan screws in black. Then the fourth bag are small mounting screws for the ARGB hub. You get one sleeved white cable which has a standard addressable RGB plug on one end and a smaller connection on the other, this plugs the hub into your motherboard. Then you have the hub itself which is also bright white to match everything. The top of the hub has the be quiet branding on top and each of the 6 LED plugs which run on both sides have labels on the top as well. The hub has one white cable that is always attached which connects to SATA power, the small RGB cable plugs in next to this as well. The bottom of the hub just has a sticker with the model number on it four screws that hold the plastic case together and then four threaded screw holes that work with the included screws, to use this mounting option you have to have four holes in whatever you are mounting to and access to both sides to run the screws through. With no USB connection or any fan plugs, this isn’t a full controller at all, it just links all of the lighting for the fans together and gives the power needed.

The be quiet Light Wings White 140mm and 120mm fans are nearly the same feature-wise, but I am going to take a look at the 140mm high-speed first then the 120mm here in just a minute to keep the pictures from getting mixed up. The fan design is a lot like the other be quiet designs, at least when it comes to the blade design. The Light Wing fans have 9 blades which have big waves molded into them and if you look closely the blades also have a texture as well. For the all-white model, the blades are bright white as is the housing. The only thing not white is the light grey sticker in the center with the be quiet logo in a darker grey and the translucent ring around the fan opening for the lighting. The ring is thicker than a lot of RGB fans have which should mean the lighting is even more visible and the outer housing shape sinks in on the top and sides but levels back up in the corners where the fan has large rubber anti-vibration pads which are also a matching white. 

The back of the Light Wings White has the same white rubber anti-vibration pads in the corners as the front but the overall shape is completely different. The thick light diffuser is gone and that ring on the back is mostly part of the main structure but they do have thin light diffusers that run around the outside on the back but they split where each of the mounts for the motor land on the housing. In the center, the back has a light grey sticker with the model information as well and this lets us know that the 140mm model runs at up to 2200 RPM. To push that the Light Wings have a 4-pole fan motor with a rifle bearing. The overall life expectancy is 60,000 hours when running at 25°c. When running at 2200 RPM the Light Wings 140mm high-speed pushes 71.7 CFM with 2.3mm H2O and their specs show it running at 31 decibels in their testing.

For the cables the Light Wings White have two cables, both are completely bright white including the connections. They also both use flat cables which are easier to work with and hide. For connections, there are three. One cable handles the 4-pin PWM fan connection and the other two are both for the addressable RGB lighting, one to get lighting and the other to pass through to another fan for daisy chaining.

The side view, looking around at all four sides has a few things going on. In the corners where the fan housing rases up over the light ring, it is hollowed out when you look from the sides. They also have the be quiet logo on two of the sides with the other two having arrows that let you know which way the fan turns and the air flows. The biggest thing from the side view however has to be just how much you can see the translucent light ring which means the lighting will be visible from the sides which is good.

I did also get the Light Wings 140mm on the scale because my first impression was just how strong and heavy the fan felt and it weighed in at 264 grams with the wires. This was a little over the 251 grams that it was listed in the specifications but it did confirm that it does have a surprising amount of weight to it.

The overall styling and design of the Light Wings White 120mm high-speed is the same as the 140mm high-speed model, the one big difference in the overall size. But when scaled down the scaling of things does change a little. The light diffuser ring that goes around the front ends up looking a little thicker and it is already thicker than most RGB fans. The center housing where the motor is hidden away is the same size as on the 140mm so all of the size difference comes down to shorter fan blades. But the blade count is still at 9 and they have the same twist, the same waves on the blades, and a texture to the plastic when you look closely. The 120mm does however change up its specs. The RPM is higher running at 2500 RPM whereas the 140mm is 2200 RPM. It has the same 60,000-hour estimated lifespan and surprisingly even with the higher RPM be quiet has the noise levels at the same 31 decibels from their testing. For airflow, the 120mm pushes 52.3 CFM to 71.7 of the larger model. But with the higher RPM, it also has a higher air pressure with the 120mm at 2.6mm of H2O to 2.3mm on the 140mm.

Like with the front, the back of the Light Wings White 120mm high-speed has the same bright white rubber anti-vibration pads on all four corners. The model information is on the center sticker and even with a higher RPM, this model is also running the same rifle bearings which is how it manages to get the same 60,000-hour lifespan.

While smaller the 120mm Light Wings White doesn’t have anything different from the 140mm model on the outside edges. We have the same be quiet logos on two sides and arrows that show the direction that the fan spins and the airflow direction on the other two sides.

While smaller than the 140mm model, the 120mm high-speed has a lot of weight to it as well and on our scale came in at 214 grams which is a lot closer to the 210 grams that the be quiet specs have it at.

Lighting and Performance

For testing, I did want to get a good look at the noise performance of both of the Light Wings White high-speed fans. Lighting is nice to have, but for me, noise is always a concern, even when you have the high-speed models like we have here. Airflow is important too, but we don’t have the tools to be able to test that. So I tested with our decibel meter setup at 18 inches away in the open air, not inside of a case. I tested at 50% fan speed and again at 100% fan speed and for kicks, I tested with both the 120mm and 140mm fans all on together. Keep in mind that I did test the fans in their sets of three because I doubt anyone is going to buy a three-pack and only use just one. Be quiets testing had both models at the same noise levels but our testing had a clear difference between the two models. The 120mm high-speed was quieter even while running at 2500 RPM to the 2200 RPM of the 140mm model. Our numbers can’t be compared to the be quiet testing but I do use this same test setup when testing video cards and AIO and air coolers. For comparison all six of the fans together running at full speed was still lower than the quietest card tested out of ALL of the video cards we have tested in the last few years while also running at 100% fan speed. Frankly, I can’t imagine too many situations where you need to crank these up to those speeds for very long. Of course, the 50% fan speed tests were more in line with the quietest video cards running at load with their stock fan profile, so when gaming the video card is going to still be the loudest fans in your system. These were also quieter than the Lian Li AL120s that I recently tested both at 100% and 50% fan speeds by a big margin and the 120mm Light Wings are running at 500 RPM more and pushing a lot more air.

I know that most be quiet fans, the overall performance is their only purpose, but for the Light Wings White high-speed fans, they do also have aesthetics in mind with the RGB lighting showing on the front, sides, and back of the fan. So with that in mind, I did get pictures of them running with a default rainbow effect. The thick light diffuser really lights things up and with the diffuser being exposed to the fan blades and the sides that light isn’t just contained in that ring, it lights up the entire fan because of the white finish. The blades show some of it about halfway down and everything but the raised corners where the vibration pads are, the rest of the white housing is all lit up as well. The side view shows how much of the lighting is visible even if you can’t see the front at all and it’s a lot more than I expected, there are even small openings in the corners which let out some light there as well.

Even with the fans turned off but the lighting on they look good, in fact even better. The waves on the fan blades give a nice contrast.

The same LEDs that light up the front do bleed through to the back with the thin diffusers on the back around the outside of the fan. It isn’t a lot and it is clear that the expectation is that the front side is what will be visible most of the time, but there is some lighting on the back plus what you can see has lit up the fan blades as well.

Overall and Final Verdict

Be quiet is up in my top two for fans because they never compromise on overall quality or performance and unlike Noctua be quiet hasn’t been slow to accept the move to aesthetics being important too with them having blacked out fans the entire time and white being an option as well. The addition of lighting with their Light Wing fans just continued that trend and the new Light Wing White fans do the same. The Light Wing White fans are heavy and solid and when it comes to noise performance they were in a completely different class compared to the always popular Uni-Fans from Lian Li. They also offer a 3-year warranty whereas Lian Li with the Uni-Fans and Corsair both have 2-year warranties. This doesn’t compare to the warranties you can get on non-RGB fans with Noctua having 6 years and be quiet themselves having 5 years. For this being their first line of RGB fans they did a great job of having a lot of light with the extra thick light ring and making sure to have it visible from every side including the back not only that but with the white design specifically the RGB lights up the entire white housing.

The Light Wings White high-speed fans did have their downsides. Like with a lot of the older RGB fan designs from other companies, you do have a mess of cables to deal with both with the standard fan cables and RGB cables as well. Be quiet helped some with each fan being daisy chainable as well as the included hub, but once you start comparing it with some of the latest fans which have cutting down the wiring in mind there is still room to improve. The hub isn’t a full controller as well which may be a little confusing to some. Corsair for example and some other companies use a controller to handle all of their lighting but be quiet is passing all of that on to your motherboard, so you will need to make sure you have a header for that available. The other big issue is that all of the Light Wings White fans, unlike the black models, are only available in triple packs. It doesn’t matter if you get 120mm or 1400mm sizes on the standard or high-speed models they are all only available in triple packs. So if you need 4 fans or if your case needs just one 120mm or 140mm fan along with three of the others you will have to buy a whole triple pack to accomplish that.

As far as pricing is concerned the 120mm 3 pack will cost you $79.90 and the larger 140mm size is $84.90. It doesn’t matter if you get the high-speed model like we have here or the standard model the pricing is the same there. That puts the Light Wings fans around $10 less than the Uni-Fans and a lot lower than Corsairs pricing. You don’t get a controller which would normally make the pricing lower, but the build construction is also a lot higher as well putting the Light Wings in their own class altogether. So if you are looking for RGB fans but aren’t willing to compromise on noise, this is the only way to go.

Live Pricing:

Light Wings White 120mm PWM high-speed Triple Pack

Light Wings White 140mm PWM high-speed Triple Pack

Author Bio

Author: garfi3ldWebsite: http://lanoc.org

Editor-in-chief

You might call him obsessed or just a hardcore geek. Wes's obsession with gaming hardware and gadgets isn't anything new, he could be found taking things apart even as a child. When not poking around in PC's he can be found playing League of Legends, Awesomenauts, or Civilization 5 or watching a wide variety of TV shows and Movies. A car guy at heart, the same things that draw him into tweaking cars apply when building good looking fast computers. If you are interested in writing for Wes here at LanOC you can reach out to him directly using our contact form.