LL120 RGB fans in white have higher RPM than the black ones?

According to the Corsair webshop the white LL120 RGB go up to 2200 RPM while the black one only reach 1600 RPM? Is there a reason for this, or is it a mistake?

The LL fans (black) were originally released as a general case fan with specs decided along those lines. Don't want it too loud or too fast for that percentage of people who still don't do fan control. 1500-1700 rpm is pretty consistent with that archetype.

 

The White LL came into exitance in the box with the white Platinum H100i SE. 240mm radiators don't have enough surface area to get away with low fan speeds in performance bench tests (or cooler reviews) to keep them competitive. The Pro series H100i Pro also gets different higher speed fans from its 280/360mm siblings and the H100i Platinum Black got the high speed ML fans as well (2400 rpm). It short, it was necessary for that product. I suppose then it made more financial sense to market the existing fan, rather than create another SKU combination of motor and frame/blade and things stayed that way.

Thanks again for this explanation, c-attack.

Do you think it's safe to use the black LL120 fans with the H150i Elite Capellix despite their lower RPM? Although I don't think I would run the AiO fans at such high speeds anyway. That must be incredibly loud.

Yes, you shouldn't really notice any meaningful difference when connected to a 360mm. The more fan surface area you have, the less blade design and speed matter. I ran my O11D with an 8700K + 2080 Ti spread over 2x360mm radiators and 6 LL120s. I swapped to 6 HD at one point and 6 ML at another. It was about 1.5C max coolant difference between worst and best. So at gaming load that is around 425W/2 radiators or 205-210W per 360mm unit. You will never reach that kind of wattage on the 8700K for a SINGLE 360mm radiator, so differences for you would be even less.

 

This is more of an issue for people running 120 or 240mm radiators with corresponding high wattage to dissipate. Someone the other day was using a LL120 on their single panel 120mm GPU hybrid radiator. That is a situation where you have maximum wattage, minimum surface area, and you will see clear differences between fan types.

Cool, thanks. I'll get the black LL 120 fans along with the H150i Capellix then.

What do you have now (if any)? The new fans on the Elite series are "ML-Elite". These are a new 8 LED version of the ML (a good radiator fan), but more interestingly they seem to have all the lighting patterns found on the QL. That makes them an interesting choice overall.

 

This stuff was complex before, but the new auto-sensing Commander Core on the Elite AIO series has raised things another notch. If you have ML-Elite and LL on the same Commander Core, it should make them all behave like 16 LED LL fans.

 

If you are planning on doing the entire case, I would take a hard look at the QL over the LL. Unless there is a significant difference in price, it's hard to recommend it over the QL with dual sided rings and more preset effects.

I'm about to build a new system and I've got most of the components already. The only thing missing is the AiO. It'll be a Ryzen system this time and I'll use the 3090 and the PSU from my current PC. I've got a Ryzen 3700X until the 5900X is available.

 

I already got LL140 fans for the case (Phanteks Evolv X). I chose them for pure esthetics. I like that they have LEDs in the outer ring. I didn't choose the QL because of the closed front of the case, but I must admit, I didn't look at the specs of the QL fans. And that's the reason why I wanted to use the LL fans on the AiO.