Corsair ML Pro Series Review

👤by Ed Hume Comments 📅02-08-16
Conclusions
Corsair ML Pro fans are centered around their Magnetic Levitation bearings. Ball bearings make noise you can hear. The prototypical quiet bearing is the sleeve bearing -- at the beginning of its life. As they age, the sleeve bearing and its derivative sealed bearings begin to wear out. If you have handled a lot of fans you have seen some of them leak. Magnetic Levitation solves all of that.

The Corsair ML Pro fans are gorgeous. The boxes are pretty. And when you pull them open, they speak to color and elegance. Once they had the ML bearings in hand, somebody spent a lot of time getting the aesthetics right. Even so, the corner caps can be removed and replaced with the color of the user's choice. The ML series is newly introduced, but Corsair has promised replacement corner caps. One wonders what colors we will see.


As you have seen, the LED version of Corsair's ML Pro fans produce shining beacons in the dark, sprucing up their computers, no matter what lighting there is outside.

Since Corsair ML Pro are PWM fans, they rotate at variable speeds, and then only as fast as you need them. They are quiet at idle -- you won't hear a fan rotating under 500 rpm. Further, PWM fans can draw their current from the motherboard, or directly from the PSU through what are called 'PWM Splitters'. Take your pick.

The rubber corners not only cradle bolts that slide through them to attach to radiators, but the cushioning effect means that noise will be suppressed when you mount these on a case.

All in all, these are premium fans for elegant locations. For the level of performance that the ML series presents, along with their beauty, these fans will receive the Vortez Silver award.

Pros
+ Magnetically Levitated, so the bearings don't wear out.
+ The Magnetic Levitation bearings run silently.
+ The LEDs provide pleasant illumination on LED fans.
+ PWM control only spins the fans up when they are needed.
+ No louder than specified.
+ The rubber cushions at the corners dampen noise.
+ The ML Pro series produce more CFM than specified.

Cons
- These are expensive fans.




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