Aura Sync RGB lighting not working through Armoury Crate or Aura Creator

[CelestialFeint]

The RGB lighting control no longer works in my ROG Strix z390-E motherboard to control the RGB lighting with my 3 installed DEEPCOOL fans. It was working in the past however for around 4 years - which is when I bought the Mobo. I think it stopped working a few months ago when one of the following things happened but I'm not sure...

• I updated Armour Crate to the latest version and installed all available updates within (except some cosmetic ones regarding festive effects)
• I lost power in my home when I had the PC on... and when power was restored the PC started going into a boot loop. To fix it, I first dusted off my PC, did a hard restart, went into BIOS (but changed nothing), and restarted again. It resolved. Has been fine since.

My motherboard is no longer visible in Aura Sync within Armoury Crate. Also, I get some Windows 11 specific options that I can't do anything about.

 In the screenshot above of Aura Sync within Armoury Crate you can see that I only have one device detected (2): the addressable LED strip. I've never used this before to be honest and I don't know which connector on the motherboard this maps to... and I'm very sure I don't use it. Again I have 3 fans with RGB lights and those connect to dedicated fan connectors. I'm 100% certain the motherboard was also a "device" listed here but again after the last update I did a few months ago this is no longer visible. If I go to the "effects" tab and choose an effect ... nothing happens. All my lights are white, always. In the screenshot (1) is also new - I've never seen this before. It describes something to tweak for "Dynamic Lighting" but I have Windows 10 64bit so this isn't relevant to me at all. I suspect that the new update isn't detecting that I have Windows 10 properly?

None of the lighting effects work anymore. My LEDs are always white.

My motherboard is definitely detected in the "Devices" page

 In the "devices" page above you can see my motherboard is detected. Don't have many options here as you can see. I don't remember using this page in the past and I haven't changed anything here.

All the sensors in the dashboard work and my fan controls work too. Aura lighting doesn't work from here either though.

 The funny thing is everything else except lighting in the "dashboard" page works. The sensors work. The fan control works properly. It's just Aura lighting that doesn't work.

The "available devices" in Aura Creator lists my motherboard properly.

Clicking "ok" in the previous dialog shows this error. The lighting preview controls in Aura Creator do not work at all and I suspect it relates to this error.

I've never used Aura Creator in the past but thought I'd pop in there to see if I could control the lighting through there. I went to "Available Devices" and to my delight I see my motherboard listed here alongside the "addressible LED strip" from Armoury Crate! When I click "ok" in this modal though I get a strange error. I dismiss it. Apart from this it's good news that I can actually select my motherboard and apply some lighting effects ... so I proceed to setup a layer with a lighting effect and run play. Sadly, this doesn't work either although it applies when hitting the play button with no further errors.

I have three DEEPCOOL fans that have RGB lighting

 My RGB setup is really simple. I have three DEEPCOOL RF 120 56.5 CFM 120mm fans plugged into the three fan connectors I've highlighted in green above. The fan that's on my CPU cooling stack is plugged in to the connector I circled in brown - it has no RGB lighting. Lastly, I have something plugged into the RGB header at the top of the board. I can't remember what this is but it seems to control the power to all lighting on the board. I've always had this plugged in and never changed this since I first setup my PC.

My PC build is publicly visible here: https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/b/WRZRsY

I've also tried a few things to attempt to fix my issue:

• restarted several times
• fully power cycle by turning off PC and PSU unit
• downloaded all available Windows updates
• updated Armoury Crate and all available updates (except cosmetic festive effects)
• fully uninstalled Armoury Crate using the uninstall tool from the app's support page and re-installed. (I had to uninstall in safe mode with non-windows services disabled because the uninstall failed the first time) I installed it again in normal boot using the latest installer provided on the app's support page which installs Armoury Crate and Aura Creator (and other services it seems)

Here's some info I gathered from Armoury Crate "about" page service tool:

Item Version
---- -------
Armoury Crate UWP App 5.9.4.0
ROG Live Service 2.4.19.0
Aura Service (Lighting Service) 3.07.49
Armoury Crate lite service 5.9.4
Aura Wallpaper Service Not installed
Aura SDK 3.04.43
ArmouryDevice 4.2.0.2
ASUS AIOFan HAL 1.3.3.1
ASUS AURA Extension Card HAL 1.1.0.20
ASUS AURA Motherboard HAL 1.5.0.1
ASUS Ambient HAL 3.4.0.0
KingstonDram 1.1.36
AURA DRAM Component 1.1.27
ENE RGB HAL 1.1.52.0
ENE_EHD_M2_HAL 1.0.13.0
Patriot Viper DRAM RGB 1.0.9.8
Patriot Viper M2 SSD RGB 1.1.0.3
Universal Holtek RGB DRAM 1.0.0.7
WD_BLACK AN1500 1.0.14.0
AIOFanSDK 3.00.15
MainSDK 2.01.27
MbLedSDK 3.00.34
Armoury Crate Plugin - Aio 2.0.12
Armoury Crate Plugin - Motherboard 1.2.20
ASUS Motherboard 4.02.32

And lastly, here's some info I gathered from "System Information" through Windows.

OS Name Microsoft Windows 10 Pro
Version 10.0.19045 Build 19045
System Type x64-based PC
System SKU ASUS_MB_CNL
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-8700K CPU @ 3.70GHz, 3696 Mhz, 6 Core(s), 12 Logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date American Megatrends Inc. 0903, 2019-03-18
SMBIOS Version 3.1
Embedded Controller Version 255.255
BIOS Mode UEFI
BaseBoard Manufacturer ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC.
BaseBoard Product ROG STRIX Z390-E GAMING
BaseBoard Version Rev 1.xx
Locale United States
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "10.0.19041.3636"
Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 32.0 GB
Device Encryption Support Reasons for failed automatic device encryption: TPM is not usable, PCR7 binding is not supported, Hardware Security Test Interface failed and device is not Modern Standby, Un-allowed DMA capable bus/device(s) detected, TPM is not usable

[CelestialFeint]

I submitted a form response to https://docs.google.com/forms/u/0/d/e/1FAIpQLScJoROIPQx66_V98Y6uKleaf37SmsWbCwH8jsqCeeDCneNVyA/formR... as described in the pinned post at the top of this forum category.

[Nate152]

Hello CelestialFeint

I would check what you have connected to the RGB Header 1.

With an addressable led strip, you should be using number 9 in your motherboard photo.

[CelestialFeint]

@Nate152 

Thanks for the response!

So I looked into my wiring today and turns out that cable connected to RGB header 1 is just my 3 fans. My fans came with some wiring to wire the RGB headers daisy-chained.  Should've remembered that the power and the RGB lighting is separate.

And thanks for the info on the LED strip - that makes sense! I don't have one at the moment but I'll know where to plug it in if I get one.

[CelestialFeint · Accepted solution]

So big update.... I managed to solve my problem! I don't think I was the cause though... I still think there's a software issue underneath. I thought I'd try a few things when I took apart my PC casing.

1. Turned off the PC from Windows.
2. Turned the switch off in the PSU as well once shutdown.
3. Unplugged the RGB Header from slot 1 and plugged it into slot 2 - the one I circled in blue in the diagram. (make sure that the voltage and the individual R/G/B pins line up properly as described in the mobo when you move it to slot 2)
4. Turned my PSU and PC on. Lo and behold my fan lights are working because the lights go red. I go to Armoury Crate after Windows login and voila my motherboard is detected as a device again for Aura Sync. I can also use all the lighting effects. A whole bunch of new tabs also show up in my device menu.
5. Under the mobo device page in Armoury Crate I go to the "RGB Headers" tab and I see both my headers detected properly here! this is good news because I was afraid the header 1 was broken and that's why my lights stopped working. I was nearly feeling like I had to permanently switch to slot 2. I go through the calibration for slot 2. Everything is fine.
6. If I change the lights in Aura Effects to dark I can't access these calibration settings anymore. My gut tells me to leave them on a color so the detection isn't thrown off. I decide to try to switch back to header 1 again.
7. Turn off your PC. This time I didn't turn off PSU. I switched the RGB cable from header 2 back to 1. again, make sure the pins line up.
8. Turned my PC on again. My fan lights are fully off which is weird. Not looking good. Go through Windows sign-in and go to Armoury Crate - phew my motherboard is still detected! My lights also suddenly go to red again! YAY!

My fan lights were originally plugged into RGB Header 1 properly - all the pins wired up properly. I moved it to RGB Header 2 slot circled in blue at the bottom of the board. Then I moved it back again.

The motherboard device finally showed up again in Aura Sync.

The device page for my mobo had a new tab called "RGB Headers" where I can see both my headers detected properly. Gives me hope that header 1 will work again if I switch it back.

This is a new tab I've never had before. Probably came in an update - the update the broke this in the first place.

If you leave your lights on in dark mode I can't access the RGB settings. Felt like it might throw off the RGB header detection if I switch back to slot 1 so i left the lights on static red before I turned off my PC and switch the RGB back to 1 from 2.

I think after the update ... something about the detection was thrown off and the motherboard was removed as a valid device to apply Aura Sync/Effects on. Worth looking into still I think with the log file I submitted!

[Drewc1fer]

Bro thank you so much I've had this motherboard for years and had this problem for about a year now and have tried so many guides. Uninstalling and reinstalling armory crate and aura with 3 different versions, and clearing registry entries and program files manually. All I had to do was turn off my PSU and unplug my fan rgb controller cable from the mobo XD. I even paid the RGB tax to get a STRIX 4070ts and couldn't stare into my glorious unicorn vomit. Was unacceptable... Thanks again man

[SideStep70]

Hello, I recently stopped the AI overclock on my pc because I was having blue screens. Then I realized that my Motherboard Aura Logo stopped working as well. I was watching my PC restart through Bios and the logo stopped lighting up. My ASUS STRIX 3080 GPU & ASUS THOR 850 PSU still lights up along with all of my other corsair fans/hubs/liquid cooler. This was just yesterday and I have a feeling it is a system error as well. All I remember was when I stopped AI overclock, there was a save and exit option that went TPM Firmware> TPM Discrete. I specifically didn't change that option in the bios. I am not a Bios expert but I hit I don't know if that has to do with any of it.