Flickering fan LEDs

[BaronVonVaderham]

Hi all,

i have some problems with my PC. Recently the fan rgb LEDs started blocking off and on. Initially it was believed that this was caused by Daisy chaining two usb hubs. But after disconnecting the hubs altogether, the blinking still occurs. The frequency is inconsistent. Sometimes it blinks every 30 seconds, sometimes once every soo many minutes.

 pc is an ASUs 670e mobo with 64gb ram, a 7800x3d cpu, a 1200 platinum psu, an artic 420 aio, and 6 additional fans.

for the aio the connectors are directly corrected to the mobo (pump and rgb). The 6 additional fans are connected to a thermalright  fan hub for both argb and pwm. This hub is powered directly from the psu using a sata power connector. 

based on that, I can imagine 4 possible causes:

1) dodgy data power connector

2) psu output failure

3) fan hub failure

4) mobo failure

I don’t have a spare fan hub, soo it’s hard to check if that’s the problem. 
 

could it possibly be a software issue, eg with ASUs aura creator?

 As a note, sometimes I did see a usb symbol flag for a faction of a Second when the blinking happened. This leads me to believe that the problem is a power problem. 

[kksnowbear]

4 hours ago, BaronVonVaderham said:

The 6 additional fans are connected to a thermalright  fan hub for both argb and pwm.

Where does the hub get its ARGB control input?

4 hours ago, BaronVonVaderham said:

for the aio the connectors are directly corrected to the mobo (pump and rgb).

Does this indicate the AIO and Thermalright hub are both (separately) connected to the motherboard? As in two separate motherboard ARGB headers?

What is the exact model of the Thermalright hub, please?

When the blinking occurs is it *all* the LEDs, only those connected to the hub, or only those on the AIO?

If they're all doing it *and if* they're all ultimately controlled by/connected to the motherboard ARGB headers, I'd suspect something going on with the motherboard ARGB, and yes software can be a problem (Asus AURA can be particularly stupid at times. There are better choices in some cases).

Power might be an issue, but that would depend entirely on how everything is wired up. If the AIO and fan hub get power from separate points, I'd think you'd have other power related issues (if it were a PSU problem for example.)  If both are *powered* (never mind PWM and ARGB for a moment) by the same cable for instance then yes, a single bad connector might cause it. (Note since PWM fans don't control speed by varying DC voltage like older fans do, it is entirely possible to have ARGB and PWM connected to the motherboard, and still have a power connector as well).

It would be very helpful to have a complete and accurate diagram of how exactly all this is put together. Did you build the machine yourself?

Edited March 23 by kksnowbear

[BaronVonVaderham]

Thanks  for the response. Let’s see if I can go through your questions and comments:

I did build the machine myself. It worked fine for the last 9 months until the flickering started a week or two back. 

The hub is a thermalright argb and fan hub x8 (I think. It doesn’t actually indicate the model, but that’s what my order history says). It is connected to the mobo using one pwm connector and one argb connector, and to the psu directly with a dedicated sata power connector. No other consumers on that cable.

The aio is an Arctic liquid freezer 2 420 argb, and connects to the mobo directly. No separated power connector, So the aio gets its power from the mobo.

 The mobo had of course its own dedicated power connector with the psu.

The other fans (6) connect to the hub individually. So the other fans and the hub get their power directly from the psu.  In total two pwm headers and two argb headers are used on the mobo. 

I’ll see if I can make a drawing later tonight.

 The blinking started about two weeks ago, after 9 months of flawless operation. When it blinks, it’s all fans at the same time. It’s not really consistent either. Typically after startup it tends to be frequent, but at some point it stops. On other days it’s not frequent at all. But in all situations it does stop after a while. Once out twice I caught in the lower right corner of the task bar a usb symbol for a fraction of a second  too short to click it  I was told that indicates a usb load issue.

 Me playing DCS doesn’t seem to affect it in any way (unless the problem is the system warming up and the cause is a dodgy connector or contact somewhere)

software wise, I’m using ASUs aura for the lighting (static single color, no effects), and armoured crate for fan operations. I think armoured crate includes aura as well.

 

Edited March 23 by BaronVonVaderham

[kksnowbear]

So it really does more or less sound like something with the ARGB controls from the motherboard (to include software, although hardware is not impossible) as opposed to a power issue.  To me.

Are you determined to use Asus' software or could you consider something else?

Have you tried removal/reinstalling Asus software?

[BaronVonVaderham]

I’ll try removing that stuff. I couldn’t care less about it to be honest. Their server connectivity is pretty poor. If there is another way to control the LEDs and the fans, I’m happy to accept recommendations.

Edited March 23 by BaronVonVaderham

[kksnowbear]

I've used Asus AURA on a number of RGB builds over some time (maybe 20 builds in 2 years).  It can be very finicky and is generally junky IMHO.   I moved to SignalRGB more recently, having done 5-6 with that now.  It's a better way, IMHO.

Among other things, it's not proprietary - which if you know RGB in general, that's the biggest problem: Asus software doesn't want to work with eVGA GPUs (or whatever).  It's not perfect, in that some things are not supported (most notably, AMD GPUs from any manufacturer aren't supported yet last I looked, which is really unfortunate).  And your specific RGB controller may not be supported (why I asked what model).

Here:  https://www.signalrgb.com/devices/

Can't hurt to check.  Maybe try it.  It's free (with ads, but you can pay to get rid of them).  It's actually not bad, and in my experience, behaves better by far and uses less system resources than Asus AURA.  I've had very good experiences with it controlling GPUs from one mfr on motherboard from another mfr and using a few different RAM and fan mfrs as well.  Helps get away from the proprietary sh*t that a lot of the manufacturers try to force on you, so that you have to buy all your RGB components from them (**TOTAL** BS in my opinion).

 

PS: Pretty sure there's an 'Aura clean up tool' or some such...strongly recommended.  These stupid lighting control apps are notorious for leaving sh*t all over a system.

Edited March 23 by kksnowbear

[BaronVonVaderham]

I’ll give it a go tonight and will let you know the results. 
in general windows is notorious for poor file housekeeping

[kksnowbear]

18 minutes ago, BaronVonVaderham said:

in general windows is notorious for poor file housekeeping

Absolutely - but I'm referring more to the known issues with uninstalling the various RGB control apps from different mfrs.  If it gets to the point that Asus themselves provide a special clean up app for removing their lighting software...well, that's a sort of tacit admission of itself, IMHO

Good luck - it could still be a hardware issue.  TBH I'm not sure if the multiple headers on a board all go back to one hardware controller or not.  Wouldn't surprise me if they do, but wouldn't surprise me if they don't either.

Edited March 23 by kksnowbear

[BaronVonVaderham]

I couldn’t find the aura cleanup, but  here’s the poop.
Apparently ASUs aura messed up the lighting. It just somehow got triggered by usb power levels (I think).

I removed aura and the led flickering stopped. 

However, I do still hear the connecting/disconnecting of a USB device. From what others told me, mobo USB ports can’t really deal with lots of connections, even if the  USB hub is powered. The suggestion was to get a USB PCIe card. I still have one slot free, soo I’ll try that.
 

 I still find it dubious that a powered hub still overloads the pc USB port. Apparently, usb 2.0 can handle 127 seperate usb devices. it might be about the data bandwidth throughput. Arduino serial communication should not be that much bandwidth though.

Would that cause the USB circuit protection to kick in though? I would have thought power draw is more likely to cause protection circuits to kick in. Currently there’s half a dozen Arduinos that drive backlighting and switches. In addition, there’s a webcam a keyboard, a winwing hotas set, a winwing icp, 2 tm cougar frames, 2 displays (power only), and a headset dongle. 
relativelyhigh data load, but not extraordinary I would have thought.

 

 

[kksnowbear]

Interesting development, though I'm not at all surprised AURA would be causing problems.  It's known for being problematic; as I said, I finally just all but quit using it after quite some time, in part due to problems like this.

The USB thing:  It seems unrelated to the RGB issue.  It may have been going on before the RGB thing, you'd know before I would.

What I can tell you is this: USB ports limit the amount of current that can be drawn in total from the port (see table below).  USB 2.0 is 500mA (1/2 amp), which might not be enough when too many things are connected - it depends on the sum total of what each device draws (usually this can be determined via documentation; I have an in-line meter that tells me how much current is being drawn from a USB port).  This was one of the major changes in the next USB revision: Current was increased to 900mA.

The 127 devices you mentioned is the limit of separate devices that can be connected to a single port, but that's not considering power.  (Mathematically, a USB 2.0 port could only support power for 127 devices if the average power for each device was less than 4 mA and I'm not sure that's very likely TBH.)

I would tend to agree about powered hubs, however it can be tricky.  I believe that not all 'powered' hubs are created equal.  But, in general, yes, I would think a powered hub would itself draw less than the allowed 500mA on a USB 2 port, provided that's all that was plugged in (no other devices that use USB port power).  Also, the 'downstream' side of any hubs cannot exceed what *those* ports are capable of, both the limit of USB ports *and* the limit of the hub's power supply.  Again, you'd have to add all the devices to make sure you weren't drawing too much.

Also, it could be that the hub you're using has issues, or that the hub just doesn't work well with your motherboard ports.  It's not impossible; people take for granted USB "just works" but sometimes USB can be a pain in the ass, particularly when using lots of devices from different manufacturers.  USB is not the 'universal fix all' that people tend to see it as - in spite of the name.

 

2 hours ago, BaronVonVaderham said:

From what others told me, mobo USB ports can’t really deal with lots of connections

BTW I suspect this is more about the increased odds of conflict or overload when using more and more devices, rather than a specific rule that says you can't plug in X devices.  As you mentioned, USB 2.0 ports can handle 127 devices, and up to 500mA current per port if I'm not mistaken.  Obviously, one device is far less likely to cause problems than 10; 10 less than 50, and 50 less than 120

[kksnowbear]

Oh, incidentally, the Armory Crate Uninstall Tool should be with your motherboard drivers on the Asus website.  Asus makes a number of different X670E boards; you don't specify which one you have, but when I look at mine (X670E-F), it is there:

Edited March 24 by kksnowbear

[BaronVonVaderham]

On 3/25/2024 at 7:07 AM, kksnowbear said:

Oh, incidentally, the Armory Crate Uninstall Tool should be with your motherboard drivers on the Asus website.  Asus makes a number of different X670E boards; you don't specify which one you have, but when I look at mine (X670E-F), it is there:

 

Thanks, I’ll check that out. 
 

as for the USB affair, I have a North Sea coloured suspicion it’s to do with the panels I’m using. They  come with backlighting and the Arduino powers that backlighting. It would totally not surprise me if that results in an excessive current draw (I need to get one of those usb meters you mentioned). They’re not my own design, and architecturally I would power the backlighting separately.
 

the panels seem to use PCB’s for various reasons, one of them being backlighting, sometimes for routing signals to/from Arduinos. 
I might rip those off and redesign the circuits. Hopefully I can reuse the materials. 

[kksnowbear]

1 hour ago, BaronVonVaderham said:

Thanks, I’ll check that out. 
 

as for the USB affair, I have a North Sea coloured suspicion it’s to do with the panels I’m using. They  come with backlighting and the Arduino powers that backlighting. It would totally not surprise me if that results in an excessive current draw (I need to get one of those usb meters you mentioned). They’re not my own design, and architecturally I would power the backlighting separately.
 

the panels seem to use PCB’s for various reasons, one of them being backlighting, sometimes for routing signals to/from Arduinos. 
I might rip those off and redesign the circuits. Hopefully I can reuse the materials. 

I'd be strongly inclined to agree with your suspicion re backlighting.

The little inline USB meter is nice to have if you're doing anything  concerned with USB power.  Helped me out more than once, for sure. Not terribly expensive (I paid ~$20 but you could probably do better):

MakerHawk USB Multimeter USB Voltmeter Ammeter Load Tester USB Voltage Current PD Battery Power Capacity Charger Type C Meter Tester LCD Display Cable Resistance QC2.0/3.0/4.0 N10 1.44 Inch Screen https://a.co/d/2n5GSFx

HTH...best of luck to you