The new Lian Li UNI FAN SL120 brings clutter-free cooling possibilities to your PC building pleasure. Featuring an interlocking modular design, this new system allows up to four fans to be connected and rotated via a single cable to create a beautiful RGB fan. This is a much more manageable solution to the cabling mess inside modern PCs.

Sorry, what is it? Case fan innovation. Is this some sort of voodoo magic? Other than attaching pretty lights around spinning blades to help cool precious PC components, PC makers haven't done much to change the humble case fan. But Lian Li's nifty new technology is the first to be genuinely and practically useful to most DIY gaming PC builders.

Lian Li's smart daisy-chain setup is robust, simple, and incredibly effective. As is the sophisticated addressable RGB lighting, which is just a beautiful cosmetic touch on top of an innovative new fan design. Individual fans can be easily slotted in with pin-to-pin contacts to transfer power and lighting data. You can then plug a cable into one end of the group and run all three, or up to four if you purchase another fan.

Lian Li's retail price is $80 for a three-pack including the controller and $25 for a single fan without the controller.

Ever since I shoved the Comet Lake system inside the Lian Li DK-04F, I have been looking for a way to reduce the frightening number of wires in this system. This chassis desk is full of fans, CPU coolers, rear exhaust, and a bank of cool air drawn in from the front. Most motherboards would need a separate fan controller to tie all the power cables together.

The three-pack of Lian Li UNI FAN SL120s is located on the front and requires only one cable. If only this one cable would plug into the 4-pin connector on the motherboard, we would be very happy indeed. No cable, no problem.

However, this is not the case with the UNI FAN SL120 system: in the three-fan pack, a dedicated fan controller is provided, and a single cable from the grouped fans plugs into it. In fact, up to four fans can be connected together, requiring only one wire to the controller. The controller itself accepts four inputs, so up to 16 fans in groups of four can be connected to the same block.

Also, for extremely large numbers of fans, the UNI FAN SL120 system keeps the system super organized and reduces the number of wires floating around inside the chassis. Lovers of minimalist aesthetics will love this. However, if only one block of fans is selected, the aesthetic may not be as heightened.

Only one cable is needed to connect three or four fan blocks, but it must first be connected to the UNI FAN controller instead of directly to the motherboard. This cable is for USB, for SATA power, and to convey the ARGB love from the motherboard.

Each fan is surrounded by an array of 32 addressable RGB LEDs, 16 at the top of the frame and 16 at the bottom, which create the best glowing effect. the UNI FAN SL120 system comes in black to match the look of your machine and desired look or white to match the look of the machine and desired look.

The fan itself is a high static pressure fan, suitable for installation in compatible 120mm AIO radiators or PC chassis, with a maximum speed of 1,900RPM.

However, the fact that the UNI FAN SL120 controller creates more wires for a single block is somewhat annoying. Foolishly, I had hoped to reduce the number of wires in my build, but that meant looking for more connectors and actually having to unplug my old HDD to meet Lian Li's SATA power needs.

However, it does make it easier to route cables around the fan, which is incredibly helpful when building a machine from scratch. Also, as mentioned earlier, when adding multiple fan arrays to a gaming PC, the UNI FAN system controller reduces cabling the more groups you add.

Lian Li's new fan system is genuinely smart, effective, and looks great. However, if you were expecting a "one cable to rule them all" setup, you may be a bit disappointed. But add more fans and some really funky RGB effects to the machine, and that disappointment will quickly disappear.