[SOLVED] My DEEPCOOL CF 120 fans aren't lighting up. And are not being detected by ASUS AURA SYNC.

[vedsalkar]

My DEEPCOOL CF 120 fans aren't lighting up. And are not being detected by ASUS AURA SYNC.

I need help here. I have followed the manual to the book to connect the fans. But they're not lighting up. They are spinning.

 

[Paperdoc]

You are among MANY who are confused by the way mobo makers are talking about RGB lighting control headers. There are TWO different and incompatible systems in wide use today for RGB lighting devices in computer cases. The simpler is called just plain RGB lighting. It uses a 4-pin header and connection system in which one pin supplies +12 VDC for all lights, and three pins are separate Ground connections, one for each of the three groups of LED's along the strip. Each group consists of ALL of the LED's of the same colour (Red, Green or Blue) connected together. Thus ALL of the Red LED's, for example, can be turned on or off by the Ground lead for that colour, etc. Combinations of LED colours can produce a variety of colours, but the entire strip is all the same colour at any one time.

The more complex system is called Addressable RGB or ADDR RGB or ARGB. It uses a three-pin connector that looks a lot like the 4-pin one, but with one pin missing. Those pins provide a +5 VDC and Ground power supply for all the lights in the strip, and a Control Line. Along the strip all the LED's are arranged in Nodes. Each Node contains one LED of each colour plus its own individual control chip. All the control chips are connected to the Control Line and listen to it for data packets with Addresses and instructions in them. Each chip carries out only the instructions sent to its unique address. In this way, each Node of LED's can be set to a different colour at any one time, so the strip can produce much more complex displays - for example, waves of changing colours chasing along the strip.

NOTE that both the supply voltage and the method of control are different between these two designs, so they cannot be connected together. The header for one system cannot control lighting devices of the other system. In fact, users are warned that if you connect an ADDR RGB device to a plain RGB header, the voltage difference may cause permanent damage to the light strip.

ASUS' Aura Sync, Gigabytes's Fusion, MSI's Mystic Light, and other systems all are proprietary designs for controlling RGB lighting devices using a mobo header and software. Each of them CAN be used with either type of lighting system. The difference is in the HEADER type on the mobo, NOT the software system name. So in buying a lighting system, you must match the TYPE - plain RGB or Addressable RGB - to the mobo header type you have.

 

[vedsalkar]

Ik that. I have an Asus ROG STRIX Z370-F GAMING.
It has two 4 pin RGB headers and one 4-1pin ADD RGB header. I connected the fans to the correct header. So I don't think that's the problem.

 

[Paperdoc]

OK then, I can make three suggestions. The first may be obvious: check that the connections of cables from mobo 3-pin ARGB header to the fans are oriented correctly so that the pins are connected properly. I believe the connectors make this difficult to get wrong.

The second is this. The mobo has RGB lighting built into it. Is that working? If not, then I suspect you should check an item shown on mobo manual p. 3-18. Apparently in BIOS Setup there is a place where you can turn On or Off all the RGB lighting systems. Check whether that is turned ON.

Lastly, I don't know how the Aura Sync system works, but I suspect it needs a software tool that runs under Windows. That would be among the items on the CD of utilities and drivers that came with the mobo. Check whether there is something on that CD you need to install for RGB lighting controls.

 

[Nigel Spike]

The software is available at the motherboard web page, under Support -> Driver @ Tools. It's labeled Utilities (Aura 1.07.35). It's probably also on the CD.

Nigel