Installation & Usage
Getting these fans installed is quite easy. We will be installing them inside of the mean:it 5PM Tempered Glass Case as it has tempered glass on the front of the case where we plan to install these fans. Popping off the front of the case I took out the included fans and mounted the Corsair fans. Be sure when you mount them that you follow the arrows on them so you have the airflow set correctly.
With the fans mounted you are going to want to connect everything. As I mentioned there are two cables that come off each fan. The first is a 4-pin fan connector which you can connect to either your motherboard or fan hub. The other cable connects to the included fan controller, which allows you to change colors, effects, etc. The ports on the controller are numbered and you are going to want to install your fans in order or certain effects to look right. Our fans are in a vertical position so our top fan is #1 and the bottom fan is #3. Both the fan controller box and remote have dual-sided tape on them so you can easily mount them inside of your case.
With everything connected and the panels back on the case just hit the power button to turn on your system. You’ll notice that the fans light up immediately. The default color is white. Taking a look at fans all lit up we can see that the 12 LEDs in the frame really light up the fins for a great effect.
To give you an idea of overall light coverage etc here is the Corsair HD120 side-by-side with an In Win Aurora RGB fan, which we recently reviewed.
And here are two shots, the first is a picture of the side panel with the fans off, and the second is with the fans on. This gives you an idea of how much light the fans will bring into your system if you have them mounted in the front.
There is no software with these fans, you do all the programming with the controller. The color is easily changed by pressing the Color button on the controller. Besides white you have red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple.
The Mode button will switch between the different effects, there is static, breathing, flashing, a mode where each fan 1-by-1 lights up in a circle fashion, a mode where the LEDs alternate, a mode where the fans change color in a spectrum fashion, and a mode that cycles through all different modes in order. You can use the Speed button to speed up or slow down the selected effect. Here is a shot of the fourth mode in action.
And some of the spectrum colors that are cycled through when you are in the fifth mode.
