Asus just dropped a novel new RGB PC case fan design that the company says will look good from any angle, thanks to the way its RGB lighting shines through the casing. Rather than having solid black or white casing on the sides, the new generation of Asus TUF Gaming T120 ARGB fans feature translucent panels and breaks in the casing, allowing the RGB lighting from the fans to spill out into your PC’s interior.
In a PC gaming landscape that’s currently full of aquarium-style cases, offering a panoramic view of your computer’s innards, the RGB lighting from even the best PC fans can sometimes feel wasted. If you view your PC from the side, you won’t even see the lighting from fans mounted in the front and roof of your case, without craning your neck at an angle to look. This is what Asus is aiming to solve with its new fan design.
If you like to show off your RGB lighting behind your case’s tempered glass panels, you’ll often find that the fronts of your fans, where all the RGB lighting is located, aren’t visible from many angles. Not only that, but the airflow direction of front intake fans also means the clean-looking fronts face outwards towards the front panel, while only the back end (with its plastic support structures) is visible through the window.
This is where Asus’ new fan design comes in. Not only does it have the aforementioned translucent panels in the casing to let the light from the 16 ARGB LEDs shine out of the sides, but the fans are also available in reverse-airflow editions, which means you can put them in the front of your case as intakes, and still see the fronts of the fans through your windows side panel.
Asus claims that the new TUF Gaming TR120 ARGB fans offer a maximum airflow of up to 77.4CFM (cubic feet per minute), which drops to 76.3CFM with the reverse-airflow models. Asus also says they’re designed for quiet operation. “At most, they produce 29 dB(A) of noise,” says the company, adding that “in the heat of battle, users are unlikely to hear them at all.”
If you’re thinking of buying some new PC case fans, make sure you also check out our full guide on how to set up PC fans, where we take you through all the principles of PC airflow.