The Accessories Don’t Really Glow At All
As I’m sure you noticed, the GELID Wing 12 is powered using a 3-pin power connector. Unfortunately no 3-pin to 4-pin adaptor is included, but if you want the fan at full speed all the time and have your own adapter you can hook up the fan and go. However for those of us who like to do a little tweaking, GELID included a variable speed fan controller with the Wing 12 fan. You still need a 3-pin to 4-pin adaptor plug it in though, or a free fan header on your motherboard.
The way the cable for the speed control is designed, you can mount it almost anywhere independent of the fan. To facilitate this GELID has included some double-sided tape so you can mount the controller anywhere there’s an open surface. Having already had a bad experience with double sided tape, I would recommend using Velcro or something less permanent. As for mounting the fans themselves, four silicone mounting plugs are included. These are used to dampen vibration noise and prevent it from being transfer from the fans to the case.
Installation Was A Snap
We installed 3 of the GELID Wing 12 120mm fans into the following system.
- AMD Phenom 9850 2.5GHz Quad Core CPU
- Asus M3A32-MVP Deluxe/WiFi-AP 790FX Motherboard
- Corsair Dominator DDR2 4GB PC2-8500 RAM Kit
- ZOTAC GeForce GTX 260 AMP! Edition Video Card
- Western Digital VelociRaptor 300GB 10000rpm SATA2 Hard Drive
- Lian Li MAXIMA Force 650W Extreme Power Supply
- Antec P182 Advanced Super Mid Tower Case
- Cooler Master Hyper 212 CPU Cooler
Now I’m sure you have two question on you mind as to this choice of components. The second one we’ll answer when we start testing, but the first one we’ll look at here. Why did I only use 3 fans when the Antec P182 has four fan slots. Well the reason for that is the P182 only comes with 3 fans installed, and I wanted to make this an apples to apples comparison. Let’s see how everything fit together.
One of my concerns with using the Antec P182 was that it has some interesting characteristics with it’s fan mounts. The top has a panel that is thicker then the standard sheet metal that a case a constructed of, and the front has a specialized plastic fan mount. Still I was able to remove the fan mount, and use the silicone pegs on all the fans. Your mileage may vary depending on how your case is constructed, but the fans themselves are designed to be as easy to install as possible.
Now I wouldn’t recommend dangling your fan speed controllers out of your case is such a fashion, but if you want to you can. This is a example of what I meant when I said that the controllers work independently of the fans. The cable that connects everything is wired in a sort of loopback, allowing you to mount the controllers in any position that is convenient. So with everything snugly mounted, it’s time to test the whole rig out and see if the effort was worth it.