A-RGB noob question

[swmlon]

I'm about to plunge into my first build since 2016, and I'm going down the rgb route with fans despite my advancing age. I'm looking to get some Artic P12 PWM A-RGB fans, but don't know how to connect the 9 fans up to the motherboard. Seems most boards have 2, 3 at most, ARGB headers.

I get I can daisy chain the fans up and connect to the headers, but what is the limit to the number of fans I can daisychain and connect to the ARGB header?

I have read I can use a fan controller, but I don't for the life of me know which one to get or how to use them in practice. And advice would be welcome.

 

[haaammit]

I think I'd probably daisy chain each group of fans, so daisychain the fronts fro one header, exhausts fro another etc.

You'd need to look at the specs of your mobo to see what current the fan headers will support and see if you need to supplement it with a hub. Same with the A-RGB headers. See what current the headers put out and add a hub if needed.

Example - I've got 6 fans in my case but only 5 headers, so the two on the radiator are daisychained. wrt ARGB I've only got one header but 9 items that need a supply, so that goes into a 4 way argb hub and then each output is then daisychained once or twice to get the required signals. I didn't need a fan hub on my system, but the idea would be the same for using one as I did with the argb hub

 

[EsaT]

Current/power draw of Arctic P12's very high efficiency motor is such low, that wouldn't worry about number of fans per mobo header until going over five fans per header.

But RGB is entirely different thing.
Non-controllable RGB fans with power for LEDs drawn from fan power controller have always high current/power draw.
And Arctic specifies current from from RGB header as 0.4A:
https://www.arctic.de/media/cb/67/c0/1638880679/Spec_Sheet_P12_PWM_PST_A-RGB_0dB_EN_white.pdf
(now that's spec sheet every fan should have available...)