If it weren’t for fans, the little turbines of cool freshness that they are, the life of your gaming PC would be tragically short. Thankfully, if you walk around the Computex show floor, plenty of hardware manufacturers know what the clued-in, cool people want: to be blown away by fans.
I’ve compiled a list of some of the best coolers and case fans the team spotted in Computex.
The ones that stole the show were Lian Li’s UniFan TL LCD Series of premium case fans. RGB is old news: The new hotness is circular LCD displays that can play GIFs. The floor demo also had GIFs of Pac-Man ghosts ghosting around and even a short clip of a fighting game moving through each fan.
You can also display still images, so if you want your ugly mug on there, there’s no stopping you. You could do something more practical (totally not boring), like displaying your PC temps. The 120mm UniFan TL LCD Series takes advantage of Lian-Li’s neat no-cable connection we saw earlier this year, too, which seems to be something of a trend this year.
The fans sell for $129 each, or $390 for a pack of three, and are expected to hit retailers in Q3—putting screens on everything still doesn’t come cheap. Lian Li says that you can only install six of these fans per PC due to controller limitations.
Corsair unveiled its new iCue Link tech, which its new QX RGB fans use. It’s all about keeping things simple yet flashy. I’ve been really happy with Corsair’s recent PC builder-friendly components, and seeing that that same philosophy applied to its fans is awesome.
The QX RGB fans’ new connector lets you easily daisy chain a set of them together and attach them to the controller with just one cable. Unlike your typical daisy chain, you can adjust the speed and RGB of each fan in the chain through the software instead of the entire set, giving you more control over your airflow.
It was only a matter of time before street racing culture made it inside our PCs: MSI’s new static logo design is supposed to give it the look of a “Floating Hub Cap” inspired by the hubcaps of a Rolls-Royce.
The effect gives the logo a mesmerizing floating effect, “enhancing brand visibility.” MSI will add this neat feature to some of its case fans, AIO coolers, and Suprim RTX 40-series cards.
And lastly, Noctua’s next-gen A series CPU coolers and 140mm fan deserve a shout-out just because I’m an absolute sucker for its gorgeous brown/crème color scheme. More importantly, it looks like they are finally coming out… sometime in 2024.