Four pin motherboard RGB to 3 pin RGB fans?

hornetstinger · 6 Jul 2025 at 16:18

Just built a system, motherboard is four pin RGB, but the fans are 3 pin RGB. Can you use adapters to plug in these fans to the motherboard?

Tetras · 8 Jul 2025 at 21:48

It is not recommended, they use a different voltage and they're controlled in a different way.

hornetstinger · 8 Jul 2025 at 21:49

ah right. Not much knowledge of RGB, I thought there was a single standard.

clone · 8 Jul 2025 at 21:59

Buy a cheap hub for the rgb.

hornetstinger · 8 Jul 2025 at 22:04

clone said:
Buy a cheap hub for the rgb.

His case is Antec Flux Pro, it has RGB hub (3 pin) when I plugged in the CPU RGB fans they didn't light up. There was no RGB connection from the hub to the motherboard - since the board is 4 pin.

I would have thought the fans would still light up certain colour.

Tetras · 8 Jul 2025 at 22:20

hornetstinger said:
ah right. Not much knowledge of RGB, I thought there was a single standard.

Afraid not. ARGB (addressable) is 5v and 3 pin, whereas RGB is 12v and 4 pin.

Most cases and motherboards have moved over to ARGB, but RGB still persists, mainly on the lower-end of cases/fans.