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New RGB build

BuckTaylor100
Level 7
I’ve been building PCs for over 30 years and this customer of mine wants me to build a RGB PC and I need some advice. He’s already selected the In-Win 805 Infinity case. The case has a cool looking glass mirror with RGB LEDs and a RGB strip that goes around the case. For the memory gskill makes some RGB memory that is Aura compatible. The CPU is going to be an Intel i9 1151 chip. He wants a water cooler but just a sealed one with 2-3 RGB fans on it. I also need 3 RGB case fans. I’m-Win makes some nice RGB fans and they come with interconnecting cables to make things neater. In-Win also makes some RGB power supplies that are Aura compatible but no water cooler that I can find. He also wants 2 nvidia RGB graphic cards in SLI. I saw Asus had some and an RGB SLI bridge. I can find the cards but not the bridge. The big problem I’m having is how do I hook all this crap into the MB. It looks like most MBs have 2 Aura connections and one is 5v and the other 12v. I watched some videos and they never explain how they hook it all together. One video said they needed a USB 2 header but can’t figure out why. Below are the required specs. I’d appreciate any input on the unknowns below.

Requirements:
In-Win 805 Infinity Case
Intel i9 1151 CPU
Asus MB with Wi-FI (I can get a PCI card if required), Asus Aura, internal TPM header and 2 M2 sockets
3 RGB case fans
RGB CPU water cooler (closed radiator) with 2-3 fans
RGB fully modular power supply
GSkill RGB memory
2 Asus Nvidia RGB video cards ( GTX 1050+) and RGB SLI bridge
2 M2 drives (probably Samsung). He wants to do raid 0 but I haven’t seen much to say it’ll be much faster.
Whatever I need to hook it all up

Monitor, keyboard and mouse will be chosen later.*
2,164 Views
6 REPLIES 6

1mluer
Level 11
You are on your way. I have 2 RGB high end builds that use In-Win 909's.

Things to consider while you are asking your questions:

1) RGB there are two forms of it. 5v Addressable and 12V what I call "Slave" RGB. The difference is the 5v addressable tells each light what color to be while the 12V "slave" RGB tells all the lights on the bus what color to show with no differentiation. They are not interchangeable and could blow stuff up if you try to use a 5v in a 12v header.

Something to know as well. ASUS uses a 4 pin connector for both 5v and 12v RGB headers. Just remember that the 5v version of this connector only uses 3 pins of the 4 pins. There is actually a blocking key built into the connector to keep you from using it on a 12v RGB header. Just looking at the connector can be tough to tell until you see the blocking key.

The case 805 infinity has out of the box a 4 pin 12v header cable for your 12v "SLAVE" RGB header bus on any of the latest ASUS MB's unless this has changed and it specifically says 5v addressable headers. If it's the 5v addressable then you would use an addressable header on the ASUS MB instead.

The Fans: If you go in-win for the fans you will want the Crown or Aurora fans (Crown looks the best). You might want to look at Sirius loop fans from In-win too. I think they just came out and off of the listed fans use the 5v Addressable RGB header. They also have an all in one splitter cable used to connect the fans to a fan header for fan control and a 5v RGB header for the MB connection. It condenses the cables down to one. They can then be daisy chained inside the case for easy cable management as you pointed out. If you go outside and look at Thermaltake or corsair you will then move onto those eco systems and will have to run the fans and control their lighting using their software. This means you will need to load up their software to control them instead of being native AI Suite / AURA SYNC with ASUS.

RAM: You can never go wrong with gskill tridentz RGB. Aura Sync compatible and an extremely good memory product.

The AIO is something In-win doesn't have. I have a Ryou 240 and recently a Ryujin 360 for my newest build. Before these, I had one of the early NZXT Kraken X62 RGB coolers. It's very nice as well but takes NZXT CAM software to control it which is pretty bloaty and does interfere with sensors at times. Something to consider as you will be loading their control software if you start moving out of the ASUS eco system.

The graphics cards are just plug and play. If you go with ASUS they will automatically connect to the lighting system of the ASUS MB and be controlled by AURA SYNC. Nothing to really worry about there. As far as the bridge goes I have seen it just about everywhere.. amazon, Newegg ebay etc.

Power Supply: In-win really doesn't have a good RGB version here. They have some lights on specific supplies generally built for their premier cases and not for sale otherwise. There are some alternatives. As you may know, ASUS has the Thor 850 supply with built in RGB and OLED power draw readout display. I just bought the 1200P for my latest build. It's asus and pricey so pick whatever rgb supply you like. You can also light up the power supply shroud area with a LED strip too if you wanted. Just a thought. There are a few brands with builtin RGB.

As far as the usb 2.0 connections are concerned you will need them. In this case, I think you will only need 1 connection if you stay ASUS on most parts. Other items that use USB 2.0 MB connections are larger fan products that come with their own eco system ie: Thermaltake, corsair etc, anything with an RGB interface that takes control outside of AURA SYNC like corsair lighting node pro etc. In your case, it sounds like the only thing that would need the USB connection is which ever AIO CPU cooler you choose. Remember non ASUS you have to use outside software to control them.

Fans like In-wins are designed be controlled by the MB or 3rd party fan controllers "PWM". You get controllable (PWM) and Full Speed (FS) fan headers naturally on the ASUS MB that are controlled by Fan Expert that comes with AI Suite. It does a great job in my opinion for standard builds such as yours.

How to hook it all together is based on what you bought. Videos on YouTube are good at seeing how products work and what their pre-requisites are. So from what I am reading here this is how I see you putting this together:

Depending on MB you can get as little as 1 - 12v header and no 5V header eg: GENE. But for the most part, you get at least 1 of each RGB header. Some boards give 2 of each RGB header. You will also get at least two USB 2.0 headers on an ASUS MB. So this is how I see it making assumptions.

CASE: 1 - 12v RGB header on MB

Fans 5v RGB header, the number of 4 pin fan headers on MB should be sufficient.

Graphics cards: Self controlled and managed by the MB

RAM: gskill tridentz rgb self controlled and managed by the MB

AIO RGB CPU Cooler: ASUS just needs USB 2.0 header and ASUS normal software. Other Product you will need USB 2.0 header and supporting 3rd party eco system software.

Power supply: 1 - 5v addressable RGB usually.

Now if I missed something or if you use different parts you may need more connectors for 5v RGB. There are extension splitter cables for both 5 and 12v RGB connectors. You will need one of those if you don't have enough headers on the MB. Same thing goes for additional USB 2.0 headers if required. NZXT makes a nice 2.0 hub for the MB connection that fills that gap. Sorry this is getting long so ask any questions you might have..
InWin 909 Silver RGB build
i9-10900k
ROG Maximus XII Apex
ROG Matrix 2080 ti
Gskill Trident Royal 4400 16g

Everything overclocked and love it.
ROG Awesomeness !!!!

Thanks for the information as it was very helpful and not too much at all. I didn't even know Asus made CPU cooler or power supplies. The CPU cooler is listed under motherboards and the power supply is listed under graphic card accessories so no wonder I didn't find it. I'm so glad you explained the difference between the +5 and +12 headers as well. Hardly anyone has really good documentation on what the requirements are. I read the In-Win manual and it doesn't show the connectors or tell me it's +12v. I'm thinking of going with the In-Win crown fans as those seem to be the best. The Asus PSU and cooler look cool but I only wish the fans were RGB. I'm actually susprised Asus doesn't make any fans. I was looking and Asus has a 3 slot SLI bridge and a 4 slot SLI bridge but no one has the 3 slot SLI bridge in stock. It also looks like the SLI bridge needs a RGB MB header. Have you had any experience with 2 M2 drives in a raid 0? Do you think it'll really be faster?

BuckTaylor100 wrote:
Thanks for the information as it was very helpful and not too much at all. I didn't even know Asus made CPU cooler or power supplies. The CPU cooler is listed under motherboards and the power supply is listed under graphic card accessories so no wonder I didn't find it. I'm so glad you explained the difference between the +5 and +12 headers as well. Hardly anyone has really good documentation on what the requirements are. I read the In-Win manual and it doesn't show the connectors or tell me it's +12v. I'm thinking of going with the In-Win crown fans as those seem to be the best. The Asus PSU and cooler look cool but I only wish the fans were RGB. I'm actually susprised Asus doesn't make any fans. I was looking and Asus has a 3 slot SLI bridge and a 4 slot SLI bridge but no one has the 3 slot SLI bridge in stock. It also looks like the SLI bridge needs a RGB MB header. Have you had any experience with 2 M2 drives in a raid 0? Do you think it'll really be faster?


When it comes to graphic card sli connections.. that also depends on if you go GTX or RTX. GTX still uses the old sli bridge while RTX uses a brand new technology called NVLink which is SLI for RTX Cards. It is much faster than standard SLI on GTX form factor cards.. Make sure you match the right bridge with the right products.


M.2 is faster in RAID 0 but you will only really notice it with larger file transfers. I do a lot of work using VM workstation and some of those files can be 15gig in size. Raid 0 really makes a difference. As far as games there is still an increase in performance it's just how much performance gain can you get from transferring 100k files or 5 meg files that would be noticeable. Basically you roughly get double the bandwidth between the 2 drives in raid 0.
InWin 909 Silver RGB build
i9-10900k
ROG Maximus XII Apex
ROG Matrix 2080 ti
Gskill Trident Royal 4400 16g

Everything overclocked and love it.
ROG Awesomeness !!!!

1mluer
Level 11
Here is your exact system build you discussed..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMUZMfnLTtw&t
InWin 909 Silver RGB build
i9-10900k
ROG Maximus XII Apex
ROG Matrix 2080 ti
Gskill Trident Royal 4400 16g

Everything overclocked and love it.
ROG Awesomeness !!!!

Thanks as this was all very helpful. What's this CPU RSTe and VROC HW Key that I see on some of the motherboards? I know it has something to do with Raid but the manual said it only supports Intel SSD drives. I like Intel but the specs on their SSD drives don't seem to be as good as Samsung. I also noticed Asus has a ROG Aura terminal. Will this terminal let you control the lighting on individual components? If I were to use a splitter to connect the case fans and power supply to the one RGB header I'm assuming I couldn't change the lighting on just the case fans without also changing the power supply. I'm assuming the terminal would solve that or am I totally off base? Lastly, I noticed on the I-9 extreme processors they have 44 lanes and you can run 2 video cards at x16 opposed to x16 and x8. Has anyone tried this and is there really any speed difference? I'm not sure the pricer CPU and MB is really worth it.

1mluer
Level 11
Think of a plane old splitter cable or hub to be parallel connections mean all things connected to it see the exact same data. if the splitter cable / hub says I am going green then everything connected to it will go green. So this addresses the fans / supply playing the same colors if it's just a plane connection. however I think you can software control which devices get which color profiles individually so using Armory, Aura etc might give you that control for ROG components only. If your PSU is Thermaltake or something else then there is no way to control them through ASUS. You would have to rely on any software / controllers that come with those products.

Not sure about the VROC key situation because I have never encountered it. I have setup raid using samsung nvme drives before without any issues.

I was looking at the aura terminal the other day. This has it's own controller and does plug onto the ASUS MB and comes with Control software. There are also other features that don't directly use Aura Sync so the Terminal will follow Aura Syncs lead and also allow additional capabilities like bias lighting through other ASUS software.

I am going to go look at this again and update if I am off anywhere.
InWin 909 Silver RGB build
i9-10900k
ROG Maximus XII Apex
ROG Matrix 2080 ti
Gskill Trident Royal 4400 16g

Everything overclocked and love it.
ROG Awesomeness !!!!