[SOLVED] 2 ARGB Hubs

[mkbinamira]

Hi, I just got a crash course on how JRGB and ARGB are entirely different things.

Bought an ID Cooling Iceflow 240 Snow, and a 3-pack of Inwin Sirius Pure 120mm fans. Both of these are ARGB, and have their own hubs to connect via SATA.

My motherboard is an MSI B450M Mortar Max and does not have ARGB.

Now, the AIO includes a 4-way ARGB splitter along with a hub/clicker thingy with 3 buttons for control. The case fans allow for daisy chaining power and ARGB, and also a hub with 1 button for changing the RGB lighting.
My question is, would it be fine to just plug all of these in to one ARGB hub?
Are the lighting controls for these ARGB hubs product-specific?
I'm thinking I could possibly daisy chain the fans' ARGB and plug it to the splitter/hub from the AIO.

 

[Karadjgne]

5v ARGB is 5v ARGB. Doesn't matter what brand, only matters what connection. Some case fans are proprietary and use 5 or 6pin fans (stupid but happens). Aftermarket is all the same 4pin/3wire.

Hubs are different. They use proprietary software /firmware that may or may not be compatible with other software/firmware. Some hubs will only works with Asus Aura, and not with MSI Mystic Light for instance.

But a fan is a fan, all the same. Whether the secondary hub will work on daisy chain is unknown, it may or may not, simply due to software/firmware constraints with different vendors.

But your theory is correct, you can daisy hubs (as long as you supply power) for a total of @ 72 fans worth of ARGB. That's the limit of the data signal from a single header/usb.

Imagine that little button controller, it sends a signal to its hub to change the color patterns. That signal is also piggybacking the data stream going to the second hub. Shouldn't be an issue, but the second hub only speaks English, French and German and the button controller only speaks in Chinese, and Indonesian. Your fans on the primary hub will change colors, the secondary just sits there with a confused look on its face.

But you might get lucky and both hubs understand sign language.

 

[mkbinamira]

Ok, so I will try to connect the ARGB for the 3 In Win fans (daisy chained) and the ARGB for the AIO, all into the ARGB splitter/SATA hub provided with the AIO. They will all draw power through one SATA port yes?

Then cross my fingers that the buttons on the AIO ARGB hub can control the RGB for the In Win fans in the same way.

 

[Karadjgne]

If it's all through 1 hub, no worries, addressable rgb relies on addressing to each led, supplied by software/firmware, not a port addressing like regular RGB. Just make sure to check the fan limits per port, some ports only like 1 fan (it's a power thing, not addressing thing) and some have a limit of 2 fans. 10 fans per hub is usually the power limits of the Sata power lead.

So for a 3 fan rad, you'd use 2x2way splitters, with the 4th fan being a case fan, using 2 ports.

Think of it like ARGB is a street, each house (led) has its own mailbox, where as RGB is an apartment complex where each building (6 apartments, each being 1 fan worth of leds) shares just 1 mailbox. This is why argb can do rainbow and rgb cannot, argb is 1 led per address, regardless of where it is, and rgb is 1 fan total led. Put 6 fans on a hub, and argb sees 60-odd individual addresses, whereas rgb sees only 1.