CORSAIR iCUE Link RX120 RGB 120mm PWM Fans with iCUE Link System Hub – Magnetic Dome Bearing – Triple Pack – Black

This thing is so good and yet I hate every single bit of these fans and how they work. I would give this a 3.5 star if I can, but that would be doing the engineering behind these fans a disservice.

To be positive, I’ll first talk about the good points. I’ve never had a good experience with the older fans Corsair includes on their older AIOs and the infamous A500 air cooler. Gone is the whiny, grindy motors on those older fans, these fans have a much more polished sound, even at max speed, although the software-controlled fan curves can be problematic (more on this later). The RGB shines out from the side plastic caps (which can be removed for clearance purposes). The daisy chaining mechanism isn’t the most straightforward out of the box, but works very well, ensures a very tight lock with lots of flexibility, with everything managed by a central fan hub, which is included in the 3-pack. This is very beginner friendly for cable management, which might be what Corsair is going for with these fans.

Performance is also okay, I tested these fans w/ a 240mm Gamdias Chione AIO on a Ryzen 7 7900X, and at full RPMs w/ ambient ~66F (AIO is always at 100% pump speed) w/ CPU at ~200W power draw was ~87C, with balanced fan curves increasing to ~89C.

Another feature Corsair added is very coarse threading on the fans. This means less screwing and force required if you’re mounting these as case fans. I think they’re compatible with normal case screws, but as proprietary as these screws are, it is nice touch from a ease-of-building perspective.

Unfortunately that’s kind of all the good stuff about this. At this price, I demand perfection and I’m going to nitpick every single one of Corsair’s misses with the iCUE link fan + hub system.

Corsair interestingly has 2 giant pamphlets of regulatory information, but still requires you to scan a QR code for the manual. I can also see a novice builder confusing the dummy fan bridges with the active fan bridges, and end up with a non-functioning fan because maybe they use a dummy fan bridge on both of the fan connectors, or alternatively flipped them around when connecting the fans together.

Starting from the hub, Corsair, I understand a micro-USB cable is slightly narrower, and you’re not going to need all of the USB bandwidth, but at this price point, why not USB-C for the cable to the motherboard? Also, why a PCIE 6-pin for power for the hub instead of SATA? A lot of “normal” fan+ARGB hubs use a single SATA for power to many ARGB fans, and with this hub, I need to sacrifice a PCIE 6-pin cable and a connector on the power supply just to power these fans, and sure, if you can afford these fans you can probably afford a chungus PSU with plenty of PCIE cables, but you’re probably also going higher end where you need 3 PCIE 8-pin cables for your GPU, and you might not have enough cables for your GPU because you’re running one of those to a fan hub. The manual doesn’t even say that the “power connector” is a PCIE 6-pin. At least the hub isn’t powered by molex…

As for the fans themselves, the LED lighting doesn’t really scream “premium” for the price you’re paying. However, the lack of motherboard PWM (and ARGB) header support hurts these things. You’re limited to fan curves through the iCUE software, and there’s a very large fan noise discrepancy between 40% and 50% fan speed, and there’s a pretty large jump from 40% to 45%. Software control also has another issue of having awful hysteresis, even though the iCUE software has a lot of data points for fan tuning based on CPU temps, the fan RPM changes feel very jerky, almost if there’s no curve smoothing between RPM changes. The fan won’t overshoot RPMs or something, but it will feel like the fan responds quickly but with lag instead of motherboard PWM control.

Dependency on iCUE software is also a problem, as outline above, say if you’re running Linux, you’re kind of stuck if you have these fans. At least the RGB can be “firmware controlled”, where you can set a lighting effect, and it will remain effective w/out iCUE running in the background

At the end of the day, this isn’t something I would buy, not when Thermalright sells a 3-pack of their TL-C12C-S for $13 that has PWM and ARGB daisy-chaining and doesn’t require a software to run in the background that slows my computer down. At the time of this review, this 3-pack 120mm costs $100, an astronomical number for fans. However I can’t fault Corsair’s ease-of-use perspective. These fans are well-built, performs okay, and are easy to cable manage. I guess I’m not the target audience for these fans, this is more for a beginner builder with a lot of money who wants to have an easier time with cable management, RGB setup, and fan tuning. As expensive as these things are, there’s a lot of cool stuff Corsair is doing here with the software and hardware as part of the iCUE ecosystem, and I can’t discount that.

These corsair fans are fairly simple and easy to install, the one cable for power and led control make cable management easier. There were no instructions included, so I had to figure it out on my own but it was pretty easy. You will need a spare 6 pin pcie (graphics card) power cable. This cable is what powers the fans, you also need a usb port on your motherboard to plug in for icue to detect the hub and manage the fans. The fans have magnets built in and will pull each other together when you have them aligned the correct way, the kit comes with small plastic inserts to bridge power to each fan in the chain.

Installation was as follows, Power the ice Link Hub with pcie 6 pin power cable, usb cable from motherboard to icue link hub. Icue link cable from 1 fan chain to icue link hub. One short and one long cable is included, you can continue the chain from the last fan in the chain by plugging in another icue link cable to it.

Overall, a nice easy streamlined way to run and manage rgb fans or other icue link accessories, over time I will be replacing all my fans and other components with Icue Link.

These fans are fantastic! My Corsair SP120s started to die so I decided to upgrade to these and the cooling performance is so much better. Not to mention I no longer need my commander pro and RGB hub so I can finally have a less cluttered rear chamber. I am slightly disappointed that the Corsair led strips I have are not compatible with the link ecosystem. Aside from that I am so glad I upgraded to these. I had accidentally put my top fans on the wrong direction and instead of losing my mind and needing to spend a good 15 minutes rerouting cables to adjust for the new position I simply unplugged the cables, flipped them over, reattached the cables and boom! Done! It took maybe a minute tops. When I eventually purchase the link compatible aio cooler it’ll be a breeze to add due to the daisy chaining capability.