RGB splitter... causes flickering only under load

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10 Feb 2021
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I am not sure where best to post this question, but hope somebody might have a solution for me.

I have the Lian-Li LED strip that goes into the side of the Lancool II case, and a custom RGB panel mounted in the front. Both of these use the 3x pin RGB header.

I use to have these connected to my MSI motherboard, and use the turd that Dragon Centre to set very limited effects.

Recently I found an adapter that lets me connect these to my Corsair Ligtning Node Core and thus control it all via iCue. Now, I only have 1 port free on the Ligthing Node Core, the other 5 are used by QL fans.

I connected the adapter cable to the Lightning node, then used a spliter cable and connect to the devices. I am perfectly happy for both devices to display the same thing, I just want them to follow whatever iCUE is doing.

This setup works great. With a little testing I found which LEDs within iCUE actually go to LEDs, and then can incorporate them into my lightning effects.

Now here is the really strange issue. If I start gaming, after about 20 minutes of play, the lightning on the LED strip will start to flicker. Ill get random other colours flickering in and out.

If I disconnect either the custom RGB plate or the RGB strip, whichever is left connected work perfectly fine. Just not both.
If I put the PC to sleep or restart it, the RGB effects on both will again be working perfectly fine, till I game. Then they start flickering / displaying random colours.

I thought maybe it was interference and the cables where too close to GPU power or something, but even with the hub and the cables completely out of the case this still happens...
Its not heat related either... the hub is cold to the touch (its in the back of the case, doesnt really get warm) none of the fans do any of this either.

So for now I have put 1 of the devices back to being directly connected to the motherboard... and need to use crappy mystic light to control it.



TLDR ... a basic RGB splitter cable appears to cause flickering / random colours on the connected devices, but only

I have thought of the following ways I might be able to fix this....

1.) Buy another Lightning node Core and adapter cable. Then split out the custom RGB plate and the RGB strip onto their own ports / ligntning node. The downside to this is cost... seems ligntning node core arent cheap.

2.) Buy a cheap ARGB hub , connect this to the adapter and then plug both devices into the hub. See if that helps? Do RGB hubs work differently to spliter cables? IE does it present to the upsteam device that there is device 1 with 8 LEDS and device 2 with 10 LEDs? (So a total of 18 LEDS) Or does it do like a splitter and send the same signal to every device connected?
 
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