ARGB amp question. Electrical newb here.

[NadeMagnet69]

My Z490 Taichi manual says each ARGB header supports up to 5volts and 3 amps.

I have 6 Phantek digital fan frames. I contacted them and confirmed each is frame is .72amps. That's 4.32 amps.

I also have 2 airgoo LED strips. I contacted them and they said those are .84amps each so that's 1.68amps.

Plus a Thermaltake Pacific R1 RGB ram cover which is 1.3 amps.

So it's at 7.3 amps in total.

I'm running them all off of this, which is then connected to the ARGB header. It's rated at 5 amps. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07T58RVZ7/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

However in testing, I didn't have the sata power cable plugged in yet and they still all lit up. I do have it plugged in now because I mean it's there, so why not? But how was I able to run all that before just powered off the ARGB header? Is there a danger in running 7.3 amps through that 5 amp splitter box? It was my understanding that when you exceed LED limits things just won't light up. Like you're only suppose to daisy chain 4 max of those airgoo strips or they'll go dim if you add more.

[svmlegacy]

44 minutes ago, NadeMagnet69 said:

Is there a danger in running 7.3 amps through that 5 amp splitter box?

You could kill the splitter box, but it isn't going to be anything dangerous to a person.

[NadeMagnet69]

10 hours ago, svmlegacy said:

You could kill the splitter box, but it isn't going to be anything dangerous to a person.

It doesn't say though if it's 5 amps in total or per header. If it was a problem shouldn't it being getting hot at least?

[svmlegacy]

1 hour ago, NadeMagnet69 said:

It doesn't say though if it's 5 amps in total or per header.

That's a great question to ask the manufacturer.

[NadeMagnet69]

1 hour ago, svmlegacy said:

That's a great question to ask the manufacturer.

I tried but all those splitter boxes are made in China and there's a language gap going on. lol Got a "Dear customer. 5amps" response. Aside from the few that have ROG on them, they all look the same and are probably made in the same place in China. There is bunch on Amazon and ten times more on Aliexpress. Can't get the info anywhere.

[NadeMagnet69]

I tried to clarify with the seller and asked. "Is it 5 amps in total or per header? I have 2 Airgoo LED strips, 6 Phantek fan frames, and 1 thermaltake RAM cover. Adding all that up and that's 7.3 amps. If that's a problem shouldn't the box be getting hot at least? But I don't feel any heat and everything is lit up fine."

 

And all he said was "Because the power comes from SATA, not from the motherboard, it should not be very hot."

Definitely a language problem going on.  

 

My last response "But that still doesn't answer my question. Is it 5 amps in total for the entire box or is it 5 amps per header? So far all I listed before is only using 5 out of the 12 headers on the box. With the 6th being the control header to the motherboard. I have 2 fan frames daisy chained per header. Same with the 2 LED strips, and then the RGB RAM cover gets its own header. So I still have 6 free headers. Can I use those empty headers as long as whatever is daisy chained doesn't go above 5 amps? I don't want to fry this box by overloading it and I definitely don't want to worry about something like a fire."

Hopefully he'll get what I'm asking.

[NadeMagnet69]

Wow, these boxes are awesome, it's 5amps per header. Here's his response.

"Each interface can support up to 5A current, the actual current is related to the number of light strips and fans you connect. The amount of this current depends on how many light strips and fans are connected, because it is powered directly by the SATA power port, not the motherboard, so it is no problem."

lol So not only is there no danger of frying anything, I can add a ton more items since I'm not even close to 5amps per header. Not sure if I'll bother to buy anymore since all my visible fans already have frames now. But I'll at least be able to take the 4 other LED strips I have daisy chained off my other MOBO ARGB header and have one less cable visible.

 

Now if I can only find a RGB program to replace the crappy Asrock Polychrome sync that can't even sync with itself properly. lol Which makes for quite an ironic name they picked since they put sync in it. For some reason on the Z490 Taichi at least, the 3 motherboard LED are only synced with the 2 RGB headers, and not the ARGB headers. So modes that don't let me pick color like wave or water mode, they'll start off as different colors and then run through the color cycles. On wave mode the ARGB all start off as neon green, and the MOBO and RGB headers start off as redish orange, they end up clashing colors and it doesn't look good. On water mode the ARGB usually start off red and the MOBO and RGB start off yellow. But here's the weird thing. Sometimes water does sync properly and everything starts off red if I turn everything off and go to water mode several times. But that doesn't work for wave which of coarse is the mode I most want to use. lol Damn Murphy's law... So far the only fix I've found is running rainbow mode since it already has so many different colors at once, you can't see them clash. Or by simply turning off the 3 MOBO LED and not use the 12v RGB headers.