Now onto the odd one in the bunch, the Wing 12. Coming from GELID's "Gamer" series of fans, this fan isn't so much designed with silence in mind, rather, performance is their focus with the Wing series. Using a larger and more colourful package with several windows to highlight the key points and accessories with this fan, the colour was a quick thing to catch my eye. I honestly can't say I've seen a gloss-black framed fan with UV reactive green blades before, but I can say how eye-catching that design is! Even the rubber fan mounts included with the Wing 12 are a UV reactive green colour too.

Cool looks aside, the Wing 12 does a good job of wrapping a cool new bearing design in a pretty package. In tradition of most high-performance fan manufacturers trying to find a way to make their bearings last longer than the traditional sleeve or ball designs, the Wing 12 uses what GELID called a Nanoflux Bearing (NFB). From GELID: "Patented Nanoflux bearing incorporates a clever magnetic design, very high precision manufacturing and runs friction-free and operates noiseless. Electromagnetic fields are exploited to keep solid parts from touching. The load is carried by a magnetic field." This bearing design is rated at around 100 000hrs MTBF runtime so it will greatly outlast any sleeve or ball bearing designed fans. Additionally, with just a little push you can actually pop the impeller right out of the bearing to easily clean the unit (demonstrated below).

Since it isn't PWM or temperature controlled, Gelid includes a small fan speed controller box with the Wing 12 to take care of noise levels. The fan is connected to this box via a Y-style of cable that's included. The long 6-pin end of the cable goes into the controller's bottom and two 3-pin fan connectors come off the other end of the cable (male and female). By plugging the female end into a fan header and the fan itself into the male end, it is entirely self powered so you don't need to rely on a molex power adapter. Although I certainly love these boxes being included with fans, I find that the slot-style of controller is far more practical because you can still adjust them after the case side is back on. With a box like the one included with the Wing 12, you basically have to set it and forget it unless you modify a way to make it externally accessible or hang it out the back of your case.

Taking a close look at the fan blades in my picture below, you can see the winglet design on the outer edges. Using a winglet design on the ends of the blades helps to further reduce turbulence which helps make the fan quieter.