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Have I blown my Commander Pro up?


Zakimimula

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Building a new system; specs as per my profile. I read and followed the advice here in the forum, and have connected everything as per this diagram:

https://i.imgur.com/XSDWsneh.png

...with the exception that I have 3 ML120 Pro fans, not 6.

 

Putting the PC together this weekend, I plugged everything in and nothing powered up the first time I hit the power button on the build. I started checking that the power connections to MB were properly seated and it fired up, but no fans or lights. I installed Windows anyway and then started investigating the RGB Hub and CoPro.

 

The problem: Nothing works. No fans spin, no LED's light up, either on the strips or the fans. There's a light on the CoPro, but it doesn't come on. The H100i is plugged into the MB CPU fan header and it fires up fine, and its fans come on, speed up, etc. I can't see it, or the i-series PSU in LINK (both are connected to the USB headers on the CoPro). Nothing plugged into the RGB hub works either.

 

Tests: Powering everything off, I disconnected everything and tried just one LED strip in the CoPro. Nothing. then just an ML120 fan connector (not its RGB connection) and nothing (yes, I did this live). I checked the SATA power connection to the LED Hub and the CoPro by swapping the SATA cable out for a Molex one, plugging it into the PSU and I could read the correct voltage on a multimeter. I swapped the SATA cable out for another one that worked before (see below), and still nothing. I swapped SATA ports on the PSU and still nothing. I can't directly measure voltage on the SATA connector as multimeter leads aren't fine enough to get into the SATA power plug, and I don't have any other SATA devices I can power up to test (yet). Yes, I have been connecting and disconnecting live, which I just read was bad... hence my concern that I have blown both the RGB hub and the CoPro.

 

Some background: I got the PSU and CoPro last weekend, along with the fans and the LED strips. I jumpered the ATX power cable on the PSU to make it spin up and plugged the CoPro in and got a fan to spin and and LED strips to light up. All good... I didn't notice if the CoPro light came on, or what colour it was in normal operation. I powered off and disconnected everything, reasonably satisfied that all was well.

 

So can anybody suggest any test?

Do I have to go out and buy another RGB Hub and CoPro?

This is my first build using these, so have I missed something?

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Are you only using power cables that came with the HX850i? They should say "Type 3" on the connector to the PSU.

 

The light for the CoPro doesn't come on except ... uhh ... sometime unusual. So no light isn't an indication of much of anything.

 

Fans, however, should spin when plugged into the CoPro. I'm assuming that you don't see it in Link either?

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Yeah, ok - I'll return the CoPro. What do you think about the RGB hub? I casn't get any joy out of it either... I think I'll return both under the heading of "I can't either of these to work".

Re the cableMod cable being a type 3 cable, I can't tell. The CableMod cable set was specific to i series Corsair PSU's... but it doesn't have any identification on it and I can't tell from the wiring. Is it critical?

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Yeah, ok - I'll return the CoPro. What do you think about the RGB hub? I casn't get any joy out of it either... I think I'll return both under the heading of "I can't either of these to work".

Re the cableMod cable being a type 3 cable, I can't tell. The CableMod cable set was specific to i series Corsair PSU's... but it doesn't have any identification on it and I can't tell from the wiring. Is it critical?

 

If it's for the HXi or RMi (and possible AXi), it should be OK. They all use the same pinouts for the peripheral cables. Is it critical? Yeah ... you need to have the right pinouts at the PSU or bad things can happen. CableMod has a pretty good reputation tho and if it's for the Corsair PSUs, you should be OK.

 

The Fan Hub will require a CoPro or Lighting Node Pro (NoPro) to do anything. It's actually a pretty "dumb" device ... it passes the signal along and provide power. No, if you got your ML fans in a multipack, you should have a NoPro that you can use for lighting. Have you tried firing that up?

 

BTW ... there are ways to (kinda) test the SATA connector. You can use a SATA-to-MOLEX adapter ... that'll let you test the 12V and 5V rails (though not the 3.3V rail). Thermaltake also has a pretty good PSU tester that'll test everything.

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If it's for the HXi or RMi (and possible AXi), it should be OK. They all use the same pinouts for the peripheral cables. Is it critical? Yeah ... you need to have the right pinouts at the PSU or bad things can happen. CableMod has a pretty good reputation tho and if it's for the Corsair PSUs, you should be OK.

 

Ok. Noted... maybe that is what killed it then. :[pouts:

 

The Fan Hub will require a CoPro or Lighting Node Pro (NoPro) to do anything. It's actually a pretty "dumb" device ... it passes the signal along and provide power. No, if you got your ML fans in a multipack, you should have a NoPro that you can use for lighting. Have you tried firing that up?

 

So if the CoPro isn't working, then the RGB hub won't either? Hmmm.

And no, I don't have a NoPro; like a damn fool I bought the ML fans individually, without realizing that I needed more than just the CoPro to make them work. Live and learn.

 

BTW ... there are ways to (kinda) test the SATA connector. You can use a SATA-to-MOLEX adapter ... that'll let you test the 12V and 5V rails (though not the 3.3V rail). Thermaltake also has a pretty good PSU tester that'll test everything.

 

Oh ok, I might pick up a SATA to Molex adaptor then, just for testing. That is the Thermaltake PSU tester is the Dr.Power II isn't it?... Hmmmm... It's a bit over $100 not including 2 weeks $'s shipping here... :bigeyes: Might go into the "nice to have" column, but I'll see if I can find a local supplier.

 

Thanks, btw, for your help on this, DevBiker.

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Yeah, the Thermaltake tester is the Dr Power II. That price is pretty rich, especially for limited use. I paid around $35 for mine on Amazon and I've used it relatively often ... but I also have 6 custom builds at home.

 

And yes ... without the CoPro (or a NoPro), you won't have the RGB effects. Both of those devices have a microcontroller that actually provides the signal to control the LEDs. There have been others that have used an Arduino in place of a CoPro/NoPro, if that's interesting to you.

 

Like I mentioned before ... do an exchange. Corsair will do an RMA but an exchange through your reseller would be quicker.

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I have found the tester for $90 locally, so I might get that... oh and the reseller accepted my RMA request, so I’ll take the mysteriously dead CoPro back this coming weekend and swap it for another one.

 

The Arduino route sounds intriguing, but a bridge too far for me at the moment.

I’ll post here next weekend and let you know how the swap goes.

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Well I went out and got another CoPro on warranty, disconnected power from the PC, put the original Type 3 cable into the PSU, plugged in the CoPro into SATA and plugged in my RGB LED strips to port 2 on the CoPro and powered the beast up.

 

Very disappointing.

 

The green LED on the CoPro lit for maybe a second before it might have flickered and went out. Now its behaving the same as the old one I took back.... dead. So I had a look at the Corsair LED strip. I have four Corsair magnetic 10 RGB LED strips daisy chained together. I read through the doco on the CoPro, and it talks about a max 4.5A load for one LED port. I can't find any doco on how much the Corsair 10 LED strips pull, but I'm guessing its 20mA per colour if they anything like most LED's, making it a 2.4A draw in total for the four strips... not enough to overdraw the CoPro.

 

Anybody got any ideas on why I keep blowing up CoPros?

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The CoPro's LED doesn't stay lit.

 

And your estimates on the strips current usage are way high. Twelve strips on full white (full load) will draw under 4A.

 

And you don't see the CoPro in Link?

 

The odds of two CoPros in a row being bad are pretty slim. There's got to be something else going on here if this one has been killed as well.

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Doesn't stay lit? ok -ok, good to know. Not having ever seen one of these work normally is making this a bit of guesswork.

No, I don't see it in Link, and the light doesn't light up at all on startup.

DevBiker, do you the pinouts of the fans headers, RGB port and LED light strips? It occurred to me that maybe I could check the for "normal" behavior... I have opened a support ticket with Corsair too.

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  • 3 weeks later...
I control mine by an arduino and the standard rgb hub that comes with the hd120s,you dont need too add a capacitor too the circuit as the only thing within the rgb hub is 1 capacitor,this is why they limit you for leds as the rated capacitor within the rgb header box is only rated too support 72 led max,all patterns etc were held within the little rgb controller which the arduino replaced.
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Just by way of an update on the issue - I contacted Corsair and they shipped me a new one. it arrived late last week so last night I tested it with another PSU, then plugged it in on my new build and got LED strips and RGB fans working, and can see it via LINK.... but its all spread out all over my desk. Tonight is to move it all inside my new build, run the wiring nicely, and test it again.

 

I control mine by an arduino
<-- I'm still interested in pinouts so that at the very least I can run a multimeter over them in case of future drama.
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Good news! the TL;DR version is that everything works.

 

If you're curious for detail, read on...

After trying to get the 2nd unit I bought working without success, I raised a ticket with Corsair Support to ask them how I could test the various components to see what was faulty. I was looking for pinout information on their ML series RGB fans and RGB LED strips. They didn't seem keen to tell me that, and suspected the PSU, but sent me a replacement CoPro in the mail. IT took about a week to get here.

 

I plugged in the unit they shipped to me on my other PC with just an ML series fan, not plugged into USB, and no RGB, and the fan span on startup. Suitably encouraged I connected the new unit to my current build, same setup, and the fan spun on startup. I then plugged it into USB and got some errors. Corsair LINK would keep popping up an error message saying I needed to reboot on startup, no matter how many times I rebooted. I noticed there seemed to be both the .19 and the .35 version running on my system. I uninstalled both, rebooted and got a clean start with no error message asking me to reboot, and downloaded the latest .35 version of Corsair LINK from the website and reinstalled it. Another reboot and I could see the CoPro in LINK. I then powered down, plugged in the RGB controller to the Commander Pro on LED channel 1 and connected the ML series fan RGB header to port 1 on both the CoPro and RGB controller and powered up again, configured through LINK and got lights and a spinning fan. I then went through each of my 3 ML series fans and individually tested each one successfully. I then got all three working together at the same time. I then added each RGB light strip incrementally in a chain on LED channel 2 on the CoPro, configured it through LINK and got them all working... despite being surrounded by a Christmas tree effect of pulsing RGB lights and spinning fans and wires running out of my PC and over the the desk, I was pretty happy.

 

The last step was to hook in the PSU, fit all the RGB fans and lights in the case and tuck all the wring away neatly, and power it all up and see if it all works. I made a neat little temp sensor stand-off using a zip tie and some heat shrink, and got them all plugged in, fitted all the case siding back on and powered up. All working nicely.

 

Phew.

 

Big thank you to DevBiker for giving me a hand as a newbie on this forum. I'll pay it forward and try to help others here.

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