Question Looking for help with RGB

[jdk09]

I’ve been having trouble with the rgb lights on my case fans as well as the built in lights on my case. Hoping someone can help.



Background: Built the PC in 2019, I don’t think the whole setup is needed here, but the relevant stuff is it has a gigabyte Z390 Aorus master motherboard, Phanteks Evolve X case, and Phanteks Halos RGB fan frames on the 3 case fans as well as the 3 radiator fans attached to my Corsair H150i CPU cooler, for 6 total. 850 W power supply. RGB is also present on my video card, motherboard, RAM, cooler. All of those have worked fine. When the PC was first built ALL of the rgb worked perfectly, including the lights that aren’t working now. The only hardware change I’ve made was to the GPU, upgraded from 2070 super to 3080ti (MSI gaming X trio). The problem started after that video card change, but not right away, it was a few months later.



At some point the RGBs on the Halos fan frames (all 6) as well as the 2 RGB strips integrated into the case (and all of these are connected to the motherboard through the same connector) started acting erratically. I couldn’t control color, they were dim, they’d flicker on and off. This happened right from booting up and didn’t seem to be affected by how hard the machine was working/how much power I was using. I had wondered in the 3080ti was taking too much power and somehow that was causing the issue, but it didn’t seem to make a difference if I was doing nothing or running a stress test, lights behaved the same. I checked the connections, found no issues. Then I just lived with it for about the past year. Recently, I’ve been doing some more troubleshooting, and hopefully someone can help me along further.



I found that if I disconnect all the fan frames and just leave the case lights connected to the motherboard it helps a little. If I then turn off the front case light, and leave just the side light on, it glows the full strength and I can change the color between the red, green and blue presents in the rgb fusion app. Other colors still don’t work, and most just show as red (yellow preset showed as green, but orange, pink, purple, white etc all show as red). If I use the color wheel I can get a few other colors, but most still just show as red. If I turn the front case light back on, then I can still do these color changes, but the strength of the light is diminished. If the 6 case fan frames are connected, everything goes back to the flickering red, can’t change colors at all.



So to me, it seems like at a minimum there’s an issue with power being delivered. Fewer light connected and I get normal light intensity, more connected and I get dimmed lights. But I’m totally confused about why I can get some, but not all colors to display. I know the LEDs can produce the colors because I caught a half-second glimmer of the ”rainbow” color scheme on my case light when I turned it on from an “all off” setting, but then it reverted to just showing red.



Any guidance?

 

[Lutfij]

You might want to mention the make and model of your PSU. As it stands you've mentioned the wattage of the unit. How old is the unit in question? As for all the RGB devices, can you please list them out, including the make and models? Pictures of how they're tethered and mention of any other software to manage the lights would help us two fold.

BIOS version for your motherboard at this moment of time?

 

[jdk09]

My PSU is a Seasonic prime ultra gold 850W, purchased late 2019. Haven’t had any other issues with the PC to make me think it isn’t working well.



The fan frames are 3x Phanteks PH-FF120DRGBP_BK01 120mm Halos Digital RGB Fan Frames and 3x Phanteks PH-FF140DRGBP_BK01 140mm Halos Digital RGB Fan Frames. The case with integrated RBG strips is Phanteks Evolve X. The other RBG components which get power from direct connection to motherboard (GPU, RAM, Cooler, motherboard itself) have worked normally throughout. The 6 fan frames are connected in series to the case, which has a wire that goes on to connect to the motherboard. None of these connections were changed. It worked well when I built it for about 3 years before the problems began.



For software, I forgot to mention in the original post that I had tried a few things with that, I thought it might have been a conflict between programs. RGB fusion 2.0 controls the lights on my gigabyte motherboard and the case lights/fan frames in question. I use Icue 5.3.102 to control lights on RAM, CPU cooler and keyboard (all corsair products). I also had mystic light for the gpu since nothing else would detect it. I tried uninstalling all of the programs and reinstalled rgb fusion first, but it didn’t change anything with the faulty lights. I also tried uninstalling all 3 and reinstalling Icue alone. The fan frames and case lights stayed in their most recent state, which was the flickering red. Currently I have Icue and rgb fusion installed, I do not have mystic light installed because icue and mystic light were fighting over the RAM lighting.



BIOS version is F11n



Also, may or may not mean something to someone who knows more than me. But when I woke the PC from sleep to check this post, I had left the PC with just the one case light connected and on. Earlier today I was able to get red, green and blue. I left it on blue. When it woke from sleep I was getting a flickering red (like what I’ve been seeing for the past year). I opened rgb fusion, it shows that it should be blue. I cycle to red, the flickering stops, its just red. I go to green, works fine. Go to blue and the light goes off, then shows a faint blue. I leave it on green. 2 minutes later I try again and the blue is back to working, though it flickers some. It seems to me like the red is the “easiest” color for it to show, then green and blue is the hardest.

 

[Paperdoc]

I agree this acts like a power insufficiency. Focus on how all those lights are connected. The case comes with a some lighting strips pre-installed and connected to a Hub of some sort, it appears. Then you have connected the fan frames to this system. The case manual on p. 22 shows that there is a connector to get power to this system directly from the PSU via a SATA power output connector. Check that connection carefully - it appears there is NOT power getting to the case lighting system by that route.

 

[jdk09]

I tried a few things directed at power supply to the controller card/integrated case lights. I've kept the fan frame lights disconnected to simplify.

So with fan frames disconnected, only case lights:

-Checked the SATA cable connection that goes from the case's integrated card to the PS, the connection seemed fine, but I disconnected and re-connected anyways - no change in the problem, it still gives just a flickering red and green. I seem to have "lost" the weak blue I was getting the other day.
-Tried changing which plug-in spot I was using on the PS - no change (cycled through 3 just in case....)
-Tried plugging only one SATA connector to the PS cable and using a different power supply cable just in case - didn't change anything

And maybe I don't understand this correctly, but I tried disconnecting the 5v motherboard d-rgb connector to see if I could just control the lights using the buttons on my case (that are supposed to cycle through a few programs and colors). If the SATA cable going from the controller card in the case to the PS were supplying power in this way, I would think this would at least allow the lights to work via buttons on the case. However, with that 5v connector disconnected light's don't come on at all. To me, this suggests it is that little controller card that isn't working right. Do I understand this correctly, or am I off base?

Also for transparency, I noticed that I bent a pin on the motherboard's D_LED2 back when I was first troubleshooting this a year ago. I've been using D_LED1 since, I don't think a bent pin on a connection not being used should matter, but I may be wrong?

In case it's relevant, I believe this 'controller card' in the case (hopefully that name makes sense) is responsible for receiving the power button input on/off, controlling the integrated rgb, the front panel usb's and is next door to, but not the same as the case's fan controller. I've noticed that the buttons that are supposed to cycle the rgb color/program don't seem to be doing their job, but it's hard to tell since I am getting just red for every color except green. I CANNOT get the light to turn green using these buttons, but using rgb fusion I can, so I'm wondering if that's evidence of an issue with the card.

Any ideas would be appreciated

 

[Paperdoc]

I suspect that card, too. You could try this. Disconnect all the lighting cables from that card. You have two mobo DLED headers. Connect one fan's lighting cable to each of these. BUT BEFORE you do that, check this detail! Those light frames require 5 VDC power. Your mobo has a feature to use that type of lights OR an older odd version that used 12 VDC - see item 10 on p. 31 of the manual. You MUST set the DLED_V_SW jumper for EACH header to the 5 VDC setting, or your lights will burn ont! They SHOULD be set that way already. See if those lights work properly when you use the mobo utility RGB Fusion.

If that works, change. Unplug the frames, and try the case built-in lighting strips the same way. Does that work?

If all that works, it would confirm that the control board in the case is faulty. Then you need to find another way to connect six lighting frames plus two strips. You can buy a ARGB lighting HUB like this

Amazon.com

Note that you would need the Model SC700 unit which has 12 3-pin ARGB output ports and NO 4-pin PWM fan motor ports. The unit gets power directly form the PSU and an ARGB control signal from a mobo DLED header, just as the board built into your case does.

IF you actually wanted to combine both ARGB lighting and PWM fan motor wiring into one Hub, this would do that because it has 8 ports of each type, and gets control signals from one mobo header of each type.

Amazon.com

 

[jdk09]

Well, looks like it is that case controller card that's been causing the problems. Seems dumb now, but I never considered that my motherboard might have come with d-rgb cables, but of course it does. So I unplugged the d-rgb that went from the case to mobo and plugged the fan frames directly into the mobo with the cable that came in the mobo box. Fan frame rgb now works!

I guess I'll email Phanteks and see if there is a replacement for that card that they can send, or just live with not having the integrated case lights. It's nice to have the fan lights back though! Thanks for the help, seems like I should have been able to piece this together, but I guess I needed some extra brains.

 

[Paperdoc]

Glad you have found the problem. I hope Phanteks provides a replacement card under warranty.