Phanteks announced a new line of products for bringing digital RGB lighting to any system. The product line includes fan frames, LED strips, controllers, and a starter kit.
The capabilities of RGB lighting are increasing, but the control systems that drive them are also becoming more complicated. Companies like Corsair and Thermaltake, which have product lines that cover everything from cases to cooling to peripherals, have a large enough customer base to support a proprietary or custom lighting ecosystem. However, smaller companies have to look to motherboard OEMs’ lighting ecosystems if they want to provide programmable RGB lighting on their products.
Before we get into Phanteks’ announcement, we should first clarify what is “digital RGB” and how it differs from traditional RGB. Digital RGB (AKA addressable-RGB) allows the LEDs in a device to be controlled individually. This is different from having a unique color on each device or having a device’s change color in sync. Those effects can be accomplished with traditional RGB lighting and an advanced multi-port controller. Effects enabled by digital RGB are those that require each LED on each device to have its own unique color.
Digital RGB lighting represents an evolution for most lighting ecosystems because it doesn’t work through the traditional four-pin connector. Asus and MSI both use the same connector, while Gigabyte has a different connector. In case you’re wondering about ASRock, it does not currently have support for digital RGB control on its motherboards.
Getting back to Phanteks, the company has thankfully not decided to launch its own lighting ecosystem. Rather, it’s launched a series of products to augment Asus Aura Sync and MSI Mystic Light Sync. Starting with the controller, Phanteks released a three-port hub that can either take input from an included pre-programmed controller or the digital RGB connector of an Asus or MSI motherboard. The hub has built-in magnets for convenient mounting.
Phanteks is also launching two devices to attach to the hub. The digital RGB LED strips are 40cm in length and can be daisy-chained. They’re available standalone in packs of two, but they’re also included in the Phanteks’ Digital RGB Starter Kit, which includes two strips and a control hub. Phanteks’ second device is the Halos Lux fan frame. These come in 120mm and 140mm sizes and in black or silver colors.
At the moment, we do not have information on pricing and availability of these products.
