Corsair AF140 LED Fan Review
Introduction
It seems to be that Corsair is using most of it's R&D budget on coming up with longer and longer names for its new products, like the one I'll be reviewing today - The Corsair... AF 140 LED... Blue... Quiet Edition... Single Pack...Introduction
After the great success of their original AF and SP series fans, Corsair have added to their range of PC cooling accessories with the inclusion of LED versions of both series. Today, I'm going to take a look at two different colours of the 140mm LED 'Air Series' quiet edition fans.
Overview
Released late last year, Corsair's LED fans aim to target enthusiasts demanding high airflow and low noise who also want basic lighting features at a reasonable price point. This range of fans boast slightly different performance in comparison to their non-LED counterparts, the LED quiet editions have specs that fall between the quiet and performance editions of the non-LEDs and are actually sold at a cheaper price. Undoubtedly, the addition of LED fans to Corsair's line up is hardly revolutionary, but more of an expected evolution of the original design. Corsair produces these fans in 5 different colour schemes, red and blue (which I'm looking at today) as well as white, green and purple varieties. This means that more or less everyone will be able to find the right fan to fit the colour scheme of their case.Specifications
To be honest, nothing about this fan really stands out in terms of specs. Below you'll be able to see the full specification of the LED Fans, as well as the non-LED versions and a couple of popular competing 140mm LED fans in a similar price bracket. (Prices were taken from uk.pcpartpicker.com on the 9th of October and rounded to the nearest pound) 2014)
Up Close
The fan is presented very simply in the simple packaging, a simple box with branding, basic specs and a clear window displaying the product:
Inside the box there is only warranty information, screws for attaching the fan and the fan itself.
Upon closer inspection, we can see that Corsair has invested heavily in the exterior build quality of the product, and the general aesthetic of the AF140-LED is very nice. Corsair has chosen to use an open corner design, which aids in compatibility with some types of CPU cooler. The colour scheme of all of the LED fans is simply a black frame with frosted fans blades.
The fantastic attention to detail continues on the back of the fan, where all wires on the frame are flush and coloured black in an effort to minimize distraction from the main feature, the 4 LEDs positioned in the corners of the fan.
The wire is long enough to fit nearly any situation, but not long enough to be too much of a problem when it comes to cable management, unfortunately it insulated with glossy rubber, instead of a matt or braided material.
Of course, the main feature of this fan in comparison to Corsair's others is the LEDs, which perform very well even in bright conditions. In my context, I can easily see the light escaping through the grills in the front of my FD Define R4. The colours (in the red and blue varieties) are quite accurate however the red LEDs edge towards more of a deep orange colour rather than a true red.
Value
To see exactly where these fans sat in terms of pricing, I spent (wasted) 30 minutes of my life graphing all of the 140mm LED fans (apart from the Corsair ones) on scan.co.uk and their prices...
You can see that the AF-140 LEDs are pretty much in the center of the graph at £10, and therefore are a mid-range fan.
To put it simply, I think that these fans are one of the best value options on the market at the moment. although they may not have amazing specs or lighting features, the overall package and experience of the products is great for the money. However, NZXT's offering simply has better performance in every way, but it is also £2 more expensive - a marginal amount but still 20% more.
Conclusion
Case fans truly are the wilderness of PC accessories, pcpartpicker.co.uk lists nearly 500 case fans and its a market often saturated with misleading and missing information, however this line of LED fans brings Corsair's offering to the fan market to the next level.
The AF140 LEDs have outstanding build quality for the price, and you get the real feeling that Corsair have thought hard about the needs of consumers and the design of the product. These fans are very popular, and rightly so, because they have a feeling of quality about them far above their price bracket.
Obviously, the NZXT offering might be better technically, but it is about £2 more (which is 20% of the price), and you could argue that spending more than around £10 on an LED fan is pointless, as the performance increase between the corsair and NZXT fan would only really be noticed by a performance enthusiast, who really wouldn't be buying an LED fan at all as they would want the performance from a truly high-end fan, such as one from Noctua or Phanteks.
Overall, the Corsair AF-140 LED Quiet edition fans are a great purchase at a fantastic price.
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Hey,
My name is Ben and I'm from south east London, I'm 16 years old and have been completely engrossed in hardware and computing for the last 2 years, and photography for the last 6 (although my pics might not show it XD). My rig comprises of a 4670k, a GTX670, 8Gb of RAM, a 120GB SSD, and 1TB storage drive in a FD define R4; its really not anything to special, but to be honest I don't really have the money for anything special. I wouldn't really say I have any real specialty in the world of computing because I really like pretty much everything(apart from databases, no one likes databases...
). I'm generally very punctual, hard working and very eager to learn. In all honestly I doubt I'm anywhere near the best qualified, most experienced or have the coolest rig, but this really would be my dream job and I'd love an opportunity to share my passion with other members of this community, and hopefully the rest of the world.I'd love any feedback/constructive criticism and I'll be happy to write some more stuff its wanted
also, i had a bit of trouble with attaching the images, so all the images are here in case they don't work
