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.

	50% Fan Speed	100% Fan Speed
All Six Fans	37.3	52.5
140mm high-speed (3 Fans)	35.6	51.2
120mm high-speed (3 Fans)	33.8	45.8

 

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.