be quiet Light Wings ARGB 120mm/140mm Fan Review

Conclusion

be quiet’s new Light Wings ARGB fans do RGB right. If you hate companies trying to force you into their RGB software ecosystem, be quiet have some good fans for you. No proprietary software, strange connectors, or another software package to update. Simple, quality, ARGB fans. 

Like their other fans, be quiet’s focusing on low noise levels and delivering a premium fan experience. To do that, be quiet has paired these fans with 20 ARGB LEDs and a diffuser that illuminated both the front and rear of their new Light Wings fans. Even their high-speed fan models keep things below 35 dBA at 100% speeds, which is by no means loud.  

Regarding software, these fans use 5V ARGB fan connectors, a standard connector that allows these fans to be hocked into any modern motherboard. As such, this makes your default RGB control software the RGB software of your motherboard maker. While this limits your RGB lighting effects to the options provided by your motherboard. The benefit is that this makes it easy to synchronise your motherboard and fan lighting, but the downside is that be quiet cannot differentiate itself from its peers with software. That said, and as we have said before, be quiet! lacking dedicated software can be seen as a benefit if you hate installing additional, proprietary control software. 

When it comes to looks, there is nothing to complain about with be quiet’s Light Wings models. The fact that these fans offer front and rear lighting addressed a major oversight from some RGB fan manufacturers. Beyond that, be quiet’s use of 20 LEDs per fan allows each led to blend in with the next to create excellent ARGB lighting effects and makes it difficult to see each LED behind be quiet’s led diffuser. 

Noise-wise, be quiet! lives up to its name, with their silent models being super quiet while their high-speed models leave us with no noise complaints. Both models push plenty of air, though the quiet models obviously push less than their high-speed counterparts. Neither model is loud, which is good news for most PC builders. 

With these fans being PWM connected, they will often run below their rated speeds when high fan speeds are not required. This will make most systems silent under most loads. When fans need to ramp up, these fans remain quiet, with be quiet’s high-speed models barely being noticeable in a quiet room. Good luck noticing these fans if you have music playing. These things are quiet. 

  
What can we say? These fans are quiet, they are pretty, and they deliver everything that they have promised us. We have minor gripes with these fans, and many of your readers won’t even see these as real problems. We would like the daisy chain to be closer to the fan for easier cable management for liquid cooling radiators, but that is just a personal preference. Aside from that, we have no real issues. We’d love to see white versions of these fans, but with 120mm/140mm models and low-speed and high-speed versions, be quiet’s already offering us more choice than many fan makers at launch. 

While many of our readers look at the pricing of these fans and be disgusted, we will respond by saying that these are quality fans. Quality fans with RGB lighting cost money, just look at be quiet’s competition. be quiet’s high-end fans are already premium fans and ARGB lighting adds more costs to proceedings. 

We are fans of these fans, and for their aesthetics alone, we think that they deserve the OC3D Exceptional Aesthetics Award. 

You can join the discussion on be quiet’s Light Wings ARGB Fans on the OC3D Forums.