Gelid Slim 12PL Blue and Slim 12UV Blue Test and Review

Maybe some of you already know but Gelid Solutions offers 2 series of products – Gamer and Silent. I have already tested a lot of products from both of the series and most of the Gamer series. The  Gamer series offers variety of really good looking products with great performance and of course they are meant for …. gamers 🙂

So far I have already tested:
Gelid WING 12 PL (blue) – made for great performance and outstanding visual effect
Тест и ревю на Gelid GX-7 – a really powerful CPU cooler
Gelid Wing 14 UV Blue – the big brother

And now is the time to check how the slimmer brothers perform.

Gelid Slim 12PL Blue and Slim 12UV Blue arrived in qute the same packages as the 140mm model made of painted in black and blue carton boxes, the typical colour scheme for the series, with a see through cut through which you can see the shape of the propellers of the fans.

Of course there are some technical details on the front side of the packages describing the main features of the products while the full technical details are on the back side of the boxes.

Now let’s check the fans one by one…

Gelid Slim 12PL Blue:

Gelid Slim 12PL Blue is made of a square plastic frame painted in black with dimensions 120 x 120 x 15.8 mm which actually is a very slim fan. The frame offers 4 holes on each side to be used when installing the model using screws or rubber dumpers.

On each side of the square frame there are 4 small blue LEDs which can be controlled by a small switch on one of the sides of the fan  as you can see from the picture below and believe me when the LEDs are working the fan is really beautiful.

Apart from the slim square frame the fan has something else to offer and that is the typical for the series light blue semi-transparent  propeller made of 11 very thin blades with a bit sharp angle which made me think they will provide huge airflow but won’t be very silent. Anyway, I will check that later.

The model is powered and regulated by a sleeved in black 4-pin PWM cable and connector to be attached directly to the motherboard and use the automatic PWM fan control.

The standard package for this model offers:

1. 4 screws
2. an advertising sticker

Not many accessories but still the fan can be installed and used properly.

 

Now let’s check what the other model has to offer:

Gelid Slim 12UV Blue

The second contestant in this article – Gelid Slim 12UV Blue offers almost the same structure with some minor and not so minor differences.

We can see from the picture above the same frame structure with the same colour but here there are no preinstalled LEDs and the switch is missing too.

Apart from that we have absolutely the same semi-transparent light blue propeller with 11 blades but this time the propeller is additionally covered with UV reactive layer. Pretty nice especially when there is a UV light behind it.

Slim 12UV Blue is powered and regulated by sleeved in black  3-pin cable and connector with a length of 500mm.

The standard package for the  second model offers:

1. 4 screws
2. an advertising sticker
3. a cable extender

So we have two very similar good looking fans and I wonder how they will perform at tests.

So let’s do some testing…

The tests for the Gelid Slim 12PL Blue and Slim 12UV Blue will be conducted in my standard way. I will mount the fans and test them at 5V/7V/9V/12V and my goal will be to check the performance of the fans in real conditions. The products will be tested under close-to-perfect conditions, not taking into account any external factors. The results achieved during the test can in no way be the same if the fans are mounted on a cooler or on the case fan hole of any modern computer case. I will measure the amount of air going through the fans for one hour and their speed. For this I use a fan controller, a voltage meter, an anemometer and a stand made specifically for this purpose.

And this is what the fans look like installed on my test stand:

 

The test results are shown in the following charts: Airflow through the fans at 5V, 7V, 9V, 12V.

Propellers rpm during the tests at 5V, 7V, 9V, 12V.

The anemometer showed the following air speed passing through the fans:

 

 

After mounting both of the fans onto the stand and leaving them to run for about 60 minutes at maximum speed, it was time for the tests to begin. As with my other tests, again I started with a gradual increase of the voltage through the Lamptron FCT starting at 0V and Gelid Slim 12PL Blue made one full revolution at 7V, while Gelid Slim 12UV made at least one full revolution at 5V. So for the first test sample I had to decrease the voltage to do the first test, while the second was just fine.

Test at 5V:

1. Gelid Slim 12PL Blue – Seems that no matter how many attempts I tried to do the first test at 5V, the fan just didn’t want to run at that test voltage.
2. Gelid Slim 12UV Blue – the second fan was rotating in a stable way with 630 revolutions per minute with airflow level of 35.52 cubic metres per hour.

Both of the fans were silent.

Test at 7V:

1. Gelid Slim 12PL Blue – the model started rotating with 690 revolutions per minute providing airflow level of 40.32 cubic metres per hour.
2. Gelid Slim 12UV Blue – the second fan reached 900 revolutions per minute with airflow level of 53.28 cubic metres per hour.

Again both fans were completely silent.

Test at 9V:

1. Gelid Slim 12PL Blue – the fan reached airflow level of 74.4 cubic metres per hour at only 1200 revolutions per minute.
2. Gelid Slim 12UV Blue – the second fan reached only 1155 revolutions per minute with airflow level of 70.08 cubic metres per hour.

Again both fans were absolutely silent.

Test at 12V:

1. Gelid Slim 12PL Blue – the model reached its maximum performance providing airflow level of 96 cubic metres per hour at 1530 revolutions per minute.
2. Gelid Slim 12UV Blue – the second model reached its maximum performance too rotating at 1470 revolutions per minute with airflow level of 88.8 cubic metres per hour.

Both fans started to produce a tiny noise from the air passing through the propeller.

Conclusions:

1. Performance: Even though both of the fans look almost the same with very similar structure and appearance they perform in very differently. The first model is obviously made to work as a cpu cooler fan suitable for installing inside any HTPC or regular system because of its dimensions while the second model is working with wider voltage range and I believe more suitable for installing as a case fan. Apart from that, when both of the fans are working at 12V they are a very good choice for installing on bigger and smaller CPU coolers.
2. Noise level: Both of the fans were completely silent during the tests at 5, 7 and 9V and got a bit noisy at the tests conducted at 12V.
3. Appearance:  I really loved seeing Gelid’s colour scheme offering black frame and light blue semi-transparent propeller with UV reactive layer with blue LEDs. Just wonderful combiantion especially when there is UV back light. They just glow like a star.

I think both models deserve the following reward:

 

Gelid Slim 12PL Blue and Slim 12UV Blue  have been added to the 120mm fans catalogue.

Official price (MSRP):

Gelid Slim 12PL Blue – unknown

Warranty: 60 months

Gelid Slim 12UV Blue – unknown

Warranty: 60 months

 

I thank Gelid Solutions for the test sample.