be quiet! Light Wings White 120mm/140mm Triple Fan Packs - Review

Introduction

be quite! Launched Light Wings series of fans back in 2021. These fans feature digital RGB LED ring on the frame for lighting effects. These fans deviate from the standard be quiet! fans’ carry. Be quiet! has launched the white edition of these fans this year carrying 4 SKUs:

We requested be quiet! for two packs of 120mm High-Speed Triple Packs and a single 140mm Triple Pack. Since we are regularly doing test builds and featured builds, these fans would come in handy for such build. The general or common features of these fans include:

ARGB lighting on front and rear
Multiple colors and modes for an individual look thanks to 18/20 LEDs for 120mm/140mm fans
9 silence-optimized fan blades for high pressure and low noise-generating turbulences (High-Speed version)
Remarkable performance-to-noise ratio with 31dB(A) (High-Speed version)
Long life rifle-bearing gives an operating lifetime of 60,000 hours
7 silence-optimized fan blades for high airflow and low noise-generating turbulences (PWM only)
Very quiet operation with max. 23.3dB(A) (PWM only version)
ARGB hub for synchronization of up to six ARGB components (included)
ARGB signal can be daisy-chained
3-year manufacturer’s warranty

Pricing

Model	Pricing	Warranty
120mm PWM Triple Pack	€ 71.90	3 Years
120mm PWM High-Speed Triple Pack	€ 71.90
140mm PWM Triple Pack	€ 74.90
140mm PWM High-Speed Triple Pack	€ 74.90

Specifications

Dimensions

Closer look

Let’s start with a statement from be quiet! about these fans, “be quiet! adds impressive ARGB lighting exclusively to the Light Wings fan series and expands their fan portfolio with a model that offers more than outstanding performance and low-noise operation. Featuring numerous advantages such as small tip clearance and optimized fan blades, Light Wings fans hit the sweet spot between high performance and quiet operation with impressive illumination effects. The high-speed version provides maximum performance for heat sinks and radiators while its counterpart is the optimal case fan solution. Both are additionally available as a triple pack with a bundled ARGB Hub.”

We are covering the 140mm and 120mm fans in a single content since the basic design is same. The fans are shipped inside a paper box pack. As we can see the 140mm version is 140mm PWM only. It is not a high-speed variant. The 120mm, on the other hand, is PWM High-Speed variant.

Each fan is provided inside a white color container. The cables are concealed on the bulkhead side of the container.

There is a key difference between the PWM and PWM High-Speed variants. The PWM-only fans have 7 blades regardless of the size and they are being marketed as case fans whereas the PWM High-Speed versions have 9 blades regardless of the size and they are being marketed as cooler fans in addition to the case fans. Since the design of both sizes is same, we are covering them in a single content. As can be seen in the above picture, the 120mm is a PWM High-Speed version whereas the 140mm is a PWM-only version. I am digging this design that is giving maximum exposure to the digital RGB lighting ring.

The black version of the PWM High-Speed Light Wings fans is being used on the be quiet! Pure Loop 2 FX 360 and 240 as well. The 120mm version has 9 blades whereas the 140mm has 7 blades. These blades have the same geometrical design that we have been seeing on the be quiet! fans. There are grooves over each blade. This design will help in reducing the air drag which will not only help in better airflow across the surface but also reduces the overall noise. The center has a be quiet! branding. The sticker is in gray color which really adds to the looks. The 120mm variant has 18 A-RGB LEDs whereas the 140mm version has 2- A-RGB LEDs. There is a thick diffuser running on the border of the frame encircling the blades.

There is a white color cut-to-size anti-vibration pad on each corner of these fans to reduce the vibrational noise. There is a solid circular casing between mounting holes through which the screw is passed during the installation. This design helps in eliminating the guesswork involve in passing the screw through two mounting holes and trying to make proper contact with a second mounting hole.

The frame of these fans is sturdy and not flexible. Each fan has quite some weight to it. There are arrow indicators on one side of the frame. The arrow pointing towards the mounting corner is indicating the direction of the blades’ spin. The other arrow is indicating the direction of the airflow. There is be quiet! branding on the other side of this frame. The 140mm fan provides a clear view of the exposed diffuser on the sides of the frame. Not only is that but the ring protruded over the actual frame height for vivid illumination.

The backside of the fans shows four arms assembly with one arm widened to provide passage for the wires. There is a latch in the middle of this arm to lock the wires from falling down. The motor hub has a sticker pasted on it showing the power rating of the fans. These fans are made in China. It seems like a manufacturing date is printed at the bottom as well. Looking closely at the border area of the frame, we can see the diffuser lining clearly. The A-RGB lighting effects can also be seen from the rear of these fans making them suitable for pull configuration without compromising much on the aesthetics. These fans are using Rifle bearings with 4-pole motor. Thanks to the rifle bearings, the MTTF of these fans is rated at 60,000 hours at 25°C.

Each fan has a flat cable with a 4-pin PWM connector in white color.

Each fan has an RGB cable with two connectors. These connectors are using a standard 3-pin, 5V interface (male and female) allowing an easy daisy-chaining of RGB elements.

The key feature of these triple packs is the provision of an RGB hub with each pack.

Each hub can be used to connect up to 6x digital RGB devices. Even this controller is white in color. The black edition fans will have black color controller housing. We can see that each port is clearly labeled to serve its purpose.

There are 3x 3-pin, A-RGB ports on one side labeled as LED4, LED5, LED6.

The other side has 3x 3-pin A-RGB ports with clear labels.

The above picture shows a standard 3-pin A-RGB interface on each port.

There are two ports on one end. One is labeled POWER and the other is labeled RGB IN. This hub is SATA powered. Even the SATA connector is white in color. Sorry, could not a clear picture of the connector.

There is an adapter cable provided with the hub. It has a proprietary 3-pin connector that is connected to the RGB hub on the RGB IN port. The other end of this cable has a standard 3-pin, 5V RGB interface (female). The users are required to connect this end to the supported motherboard. Since this is a hub, not a controller, you would still need an RGB connector either on the motherboard or through some controller.

The backside of the hub has a label indicating that this a V2 of the hub.

There is a large size 3M self-adhesive tape provided with the hub. It is pasted on the hub and then the hub is pasted inside the PC Case at some appropriate location.

Alternatively, the users can use screws for the installation of the hub in the PC Case. I did not measure the screw holes distance or gap to know exactly which component size it matches for the installation.

The below table shows the specifications of these fans.

	120mm PWM High-Speed Triple-Pack (White)	140mm PWM Triple Pack (White)
Dimension	120x120x25	140x140x25
Speed	2500 RPM	1500 RPM
Airflow	52.3 CFM	56 CFM
Air Pressure	2.6 mmH₂O	1.49 mmH₂O
Nosie	31 dB(A)	23.2 dB(A)
Bearing	Rifle	Rifle
MTTF	60,000 hrs at 25°C	60,000 hrs at 25°C
Rated Voltage	12VDC	12VDC
Operating Voltage	5 to 13.2V	5 to 13.2V
Current Consumption	0.12A	0.08A
Safety Current	0.45A	0.32A
Input Power	5.4W	3.84W
Rated Current	0.6A	0.67A
Connectors	4-pin PWM, 5V 3-pin RGB	4-pin PWM, 5V 3-pin RGB

There are 12x self-tapping screws for the fans.

A-RGB Lighting

The Light Wings 120mm and 140mm fans are using standard 3-pin, 5V RGB connectors. They are expected to work with supported motherboards from major manufacturers. The bundled hub only enables to connect up to 6x fans and sits between the fans and the controller. It is not a controller so you would still need a supported motherboard or a standard controller for that matter. We have tested the RGB lighting using ASRock PolyChrome Sync and found the lighting working flawlessly. Here are some pictures:

Thermal Testing

We have used a below-mentioned configuration for this testing:

Intel i7 13700k
ASRock Z790 Steel Legend WiFi
Kingston Fury Renegade DDR5 32GB 6400MHz CAS 32 kit
DeepCool LT720 White
GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 3060 VISION OC [For Display]
Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus 2TB NVMe SSD
be quiet! Straight Power 11 850W Platinum PSU
Thermaltake Core P6 TG Snow Edition converted into an open-frame layout

Here is the settings table for testing:

P-Cores Clock (MHz)	Auto [5300 All Cores]
E-Cores Clock (MHz)	Auto [4200 All Cores]
Voltage (V)	Auto [Ranged between 1.27 to 1.30V]
C-States	Disabled
Speed Step	Disabled
Thermal Paste	Pre-applied Thermal Paste
Thermal Paste Application	Dot in the middle
Test Run Time	30 minutes
Idle Time	10 minutes
Fan Speed	100% PWM Duty Cycle
Pump Speed	Full speed
Header	CPU_Fan Header, USB 2.0 Header
Stress Software	CINEBENCH R23.2
Monitoring Software	HWInfo64

Before we move on to the results, let me write a few lines on the new platforms from both camps. We have seen AMD AM5 and Intel Alder Lake S CPUs taking more power and this time both sides have aimed at reaching the maximum clocks regardless of thermal limit. In fact, they run into thermal limits right away depending on the cooling solution and the clocks being used. This has made testing of CPU coolers challenging because viewers/readers are not used to a new nomenclature which is what clocks are sustained under a given load using a particular cooler. That is if the cooler is capable of providing enough cooling head to sustain the high frequencies. Traditionally we are used to go the other way around that is which cooler is better in terms of thermal capacity. Despite this, we are using temperatures as a base for measuring this unit. The ambient temperature was 28~29°C. The testing is done on an open-air bench system. Once inside the chassis, the temperatures are expected to rise and would largely depend upon the optimal airflow inside the chassis.

Disclaimer: Every silicon is different hence no two same SKUs are likely to take same voltage to yield same performance at same thermals per se but the margin would be close. Not every stress test run may yield the same result which could be due to various reasons like thermal paste application, ambient temperature variation, the mounting pressure of the cooler, etc. This is very why we have listed our variables and their settings. Variables not mentioned are on the Auto setting. We are actually testing the cooler on all Auto and stock settings.

Let’s take a look at the results.

Result

This test was done using Intel’s default settings with power limits imposed. The CPU was drawing roughly 225W power so this is a 220W domain result.

We have tested these fans on DeepCool LT720 White AIO. DeepCool is using FK120 White fans on this AIO. These are non-RGB versions from DeepCool. The specifications comparison of both fans is:

	DeepCool FK120 White	Be quiet! Light Wings 120mm PWM High-Speed Triple Pack
Speed	2250 RPM ±10%	2500 RPM
Airflow	85.85 CFM	52.3 CFM
Air Pressure	3.27 mAq	2.6 mmH₂O
Noise	≤32.9 dB(A)	31 dB(A)

We can the DeepCool FK120 White fans are high-performance edition. This is on paper. How about a real comparison? We can see that DeepCool fans are better thermal performance compared to the be quiet! Light Wings 120mm PWM High-Speed fans.

Noise

We did not measure the noise level due to certain uncontrollable environment noises at present but subjectively speaking, these fans are not that loud.

Conclusion

Be quiet! has released a white edition of Light Wings fans. The white edition fans are available in the following packs:

The key difference between the PWM-only and PWM High-Speed series is that the PWM-only fans have 7 blades and they are better suited for case ventilation whereas the PWM High-Speed fans have 9 blades and they can be used on coolers. Other than that and specification differences, the basic design element on both versions is same.

We have got a 3 fans pack of 120mm PWM High-Speed and a 3 fans pack of 140mm PWM Light Wings series fans in white color. Be quiet! is also using the black version of Light Wings fans with Pure Loop 2 FX 360 cooler.

Each fan features a diffuser that runs on the frame’s border and encircles the blades’ assembly. Each blade has grooves that help in reducing air drag. The diffuser is protruded from the overall frame. Also, the sides of the frame have insets giving more exposure to this diffuser. This is not all because the backside of these fans also has exposure to this ring making it dual-sided A-RGB lighting effects. These fans have flat white color cables. They are powered by a 4-pin PWM connector and are using Rifle bearing with a 4-pole motor design. The MTTF rating is 60,000 hours at 25°C.

These fans are using standard 5V, 3-pin RGB connectors. Each fan has an RGB cable with male and female-type connectors for daisy-chaining. Be quiet! has also provided an RGB hub in each pack. This hub is SATA powered and allows up to 6x A-RGB fans to be connected to it. This is a hub, not a controller so, you would need an A-RGB controller anyway. Since these fans and adapter cables have a standard RGB connector interface they are supposed to work with the supported motherboards from major manufacturers. In our case, we have tested them on ASRock Z790 Steel Legend motherboard and used POLYCHROME Sync to control the lighting effects. The fans were responding well to the changes in the lighting modes of the app. The RGB hub is non-magnetic and can be installed using self-adhesive tape or 4x screws.

The 120mm PWM High-Speed edition fan is rated for up to 2500 RPM generating an airflow of 52.3 CFM at an air pressure of 2.6 mmH₂O. Its noise level rating is 31 dB(A). The 140mm PWM fan has a speed rating of 1500 RPM generating an airflow of 56 CFM at an air pressure of 1.49 mmH₂O with a noise level rating of 23.2 dB(A). These fans are rated for 12VDC. The 120mm fans pack 18 digital RGB LEDs whereas the 140mm version has 20 digital RGB LEDs.

Both fans have rubber mounting on the edges which is removable. Be quiet! has provided 4x push-pins and 4x washers with each fan making the installation tool-less and convenient. The blades of the fan have grooves that help in reducing the air drag which would also help in reducing the noise from vibration. The circular frame has rubber padding on both sides which also helps in reducing the vibrational noise.

A single pack of 3x 120mm PWM High-Speed fans has an MSRP of € 71.90. A single pack of 3x 140mm PWM fans has an MSRP of € 74.90. be quiet! is offering a 3-year warranty on each pack. I am recovering from a total hip replacement surgery and am still under precautions. I could not take the airflow rating and rotational speed range. I was only able to test the 120mm fans on the already set up test build. Apology for that. These fans are tested on DeepCool LT720 White AIO and pitched against the power FK120 White DeepCool fans. Though Light Wings 120mm fans have a slightly better noise output, there was a difference of 2°C between both fans with FK120s leading the way. Be quiet! Light Wings 120mm/140mm white edition fans have a beautiful aesthetic, brilliant digital RGB lighting, and a decent thermal performance backed by a 3-year warranty. These white edition fans can augment the white theme build with pure aesthetics and come recommended by us.

Thanks to be quiet! for the provision of test units.