Alienware Area 51 R2 ARGB Conversion (and More)

Here we go again.

A few things have changed since I last did a piece on my beloved Frankentower, and I'll touch briefly on those right now.

First off, my long used - and abused Thermaltake Toughliquid 360 CPU cooler bit the dust and I can't really say I know why. After nearly two years spent trying to tame the rabid lion that is the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X, the cooler decided to tap out. I noticed first from the obnoxiously frequent fan ramp, then the full system shutdowns when the CPU's thermal protection circuit would trip.

The shitty part was that I couldn't identify anything obviously wrong with the setup: cooler was seated, the radiator and pump were in the right orientation, and I didn't hear any weird noises while it was running like the pump was failing or trapping air.

My ultimate conclusion was Thermaltake decision to use AMD's stock two-hook mounting system - something you would normally find utilized on less expensive air coolers. Essentially the cooler snaps over these two plastic hooks on either side of the socket, and then it's tightened down by two tensioner screws. Because the cooler is only fastened on two sides of the socket, there's some risk of twisting the cooler as you're installing it and the cold plate shifting the thermal past unevenly.

Even when it's tightened down fully there is a slight - but noticeable amount of lateral slop. That shouldn't pose an issue as in my case it didn't for the longest time, but if there's any kind of tension on the cooler or it gets knocked around in transit, it seems a lot more vulnerable to poor contact occurring as a result.

This is in contrast to the setup Intel traditionally uses, with a screw in each corner of the socket that threads directly into a bracket surrounding the CPU. To me, this seems like a far easier way to get consistent and secure contact on the CPU. Apparently, a lot of other cooler manufacturers think so too, and eschew the sketchy hooks in favor of metal brackets.

After several failed attempts at remounting the Thermaltake cooler, I decided to just bite the bullet on a new CLC with a better mounting solution. I selected the Arctic Liquid Freezer III Pro 360 ARGB based on it's performance in tests from reputable outlets and it's reasonable price, but the main motivator was the fact it had the correct mounting solution.

It was a bit of a bear to install however as the thicker 38mm radiator ended up being a less than perfect fit where I had already shoehorned the Thermaltake radiator into place. Because the top and bottom of the tank were so much larger than the old radiator, the screw holes didn't line up and I basically had to wedge the top of new one into the small gap at the top of the case before zip tying the bottom to the chassis. It is absolutely jank as hell, but the mount is solid and you can't even tell it's attached to the case with redneck-like ingenuity.

The next thing was the motherboard. I've been using an Asus Prime X670-P WiFi that came with my 7950X. It's been a serviceable motherboard, even though it's been an overall downgrade in quality from my prior Gigabyte Aorus Z690 Ultra board. The real breaking point for me though? The onboard audio. This motherboard has a weird logic issue where if the Realtek audio drivers are installed, it defaults to the front jacks instead of the rear.

So, I ended up replacing it with - you guessed it: another Gigabyte board. This time, it's an Aorus X870-E Pro. It's much closer to what my old Z690 was: overbuilt power delivery, thick PCB, dense VRM cooling stack and full heatsink coverage over the M.2 slots. Most importantly for me, it has onboard audio that senses the jacks correctly when the drivers are installed. So I was pretty happy.

Total garbage.

That brings me to the project behind this post. Despite all the upgrades and modifications I've made to this tower there still remains one glaring legacy annoyance: its reliance on AlienFX for case lighting. I've touched on workarounds about getting the factory lighting controller working with third party motherboards in the past; a rather obnoxious process involving BIOS spoofing to trick the driver package into installing, then praying that Alienware Command Center actually even talks to the controller, but it's very inconsistent.

While this process worked with my old Gigabyte Z690 board, it did not work with the Asus X670-P. I tried everything under the sun, including a third-party AlienFX replacement tool that's supposed to circumvent the need for all the BIOS spoofing shenanigans, but even that didn't work. I've been stuck on the same white lighting profile for the past year with no way of changing it. As much as I hated the thought, it was one of those things that made a new case seem pretty appealing.

But then I had an idea.

I figured; "why not just replace all of Dell's stupid-ass proprietary lighting with ARGB LEDs?" 

It wasn't a far-fetched idea either. Addressable RGB (ARGB) has largely become the standard for implementing color changing LEDs in a lot of consumer electronics and most modern motherboards are equipped with ARGB controllers and headers. It's 5V configuration is very simple; requiring only three wires per channel to operate and each LED module is just wired in sequence - no crazy elaborate circuitry knowhow required. If you want multiple zones in a channel, you only need to know the number of LEDs on the channel divided by the number of zones you need; all configurable in software.

For the Area 51 R2, I wanted each previously single-color light feature to be a multi-segmented ARGB zone. I would split the case up into four channels: one for each side panel, and one for each vertical strip on the front panel. The sole exception to this plan would be the power button since it's mounted to a PCB and I didn't really have a clear way of routing an LED underneath it.

And the actual hardware is very affordable. I selected 16.4-feet of 5V ARGB LED strip, a box of 24 gauge silicone jacketed copper wire, a three pack of female-to-female ARGB extension cables for splicing, and a Nollie 8 ARGB controller - all of which ran me just over $64 after tax and shipping. The actual labor though? A bit more intensive than I was expecting.

The side panels were easy enough. I simply just ripped out all the old circuitry, leaving just the light diffusers. Since I wanted to preserve the electrical connectors on the panel, I saved the contact PCB and removed it's wire harness connection so I could hard wire it to the new setup.

I simply took three, 8 LED segments of ARGB strip, measured out a sufficient amount of wire for each, then wired them sequentially before securing them to the diffusers with hot glue. I then covered each segment with white vinyl paper to minimize light bleed. I also positioned each strip in such a way that the light gradient "flows" from the center of the panel outwards. Not that this really matters since the direction for each zone can be reconfigured in software, but I figured it would save myself some confusion later when I start configuring the effects.

Lastly, I soldered the input side of the strips to the contact PCB. The pads under the harness connector are really small so soldering wires to this thing was a pain in the ass. I would strongly recommend gluing the wires to the PCB just to prevent the traces getting ripped up while it's under tension. Since I'm only using three contacts out of the six, I also labeled the inputs with a fine tip marker just to ensure I matched the opposite side correctly: 5V, Din, and GND.

I effectively followed the same wiring procedure for the spring loaded terminal side, taking note of what inputs correspond to each terminal, then soldered in the wires after removing the factory harness. This side was a little easier to wire since the PCB used through holes instead of pads. I just had to make sure that I made the wires sufficiently long enough to reach the hard drive chamber of the case where I would be mounting the controller.

This process would be repeated for the other panel and I made sure to exactly duplicate the contact PCB arrangement so that both panels could still be used interchangeably like the factory setup. That just keeps things convenient, and ensures the finished modification doesn't lose any of the utility of the factory product.

There's also one major advantage that this ARGB setup  has over the stock lighting configuration, and that's the ability to "hot plug" the panels while the computer is running. On the old AlienFX setup, if you removed a panel while the computer is on, those lights would not come back on until the computer was restarted. Because of how ARGB is wired, the terminal is now constantly live, so the panel lights will immediately kick back on once it's locked into place. 

Just try not to short anything across the terminals, otherwise your motherboard's protection circuit might want to have a word with you.

The front panel was another animal entirely. Normally these diffusers are illuminated by a flexible plastic light guide lit by an LED on each end, but the entire path is covered by black plastic. In order to fully expose these diffusers, I needed to Dremel away at the plastic until there was enough room to mount the LED strips. 

I ultimately had to cut through a few screw standoffs in order to accomplish this which meant I would no longer be able to secure the front panel to the chassis. That ended up not being an issue since the large black outer trim piece that wraps around the front of the tower helps hold the front panel in place even without screws, so all was well.

The real hard part was actually getting the LED strips attached to this thing. Since I had to navigate some awkward angles at the top and bottom of the front panel, I had to section out the strips and use little jumper wires for more flexibility. It's honestly a miracle that I didn't break a single solder joint wrestling these things into place, but eventually I was able to secure the strips with hot glue and call it good.

It's worth noting that I was testing strips as I assembled them using a stripped off ARGB cable and the Nollie 8 controller to power them. I had more than one dead LEDs in the spool and I didn't catch them until I had already soldered an entire assembly together. So I would test the entire spool first, isolate any dead LEDs, cut them out and use what good strips remain, just to save you the effort of having to desolder and resolder a whole bunch of segments because of one faulty LED.

From here, it was just wiring it all together. I didn't attach any of the female ARGB connectors to my newly fashioned wires yet since they wouldn't fit through some of the passthrough holes in the case. So I just routed them through, stripped back the ends and soldered them to the female connectors.

Again, I'm testing as I go here because whatever geniuses manufactured these female ARGB connector cables used the most ass-backways wire coloring imaginable. I would check continuity before soldering first and not just blindly assume black is GND, blue is Data, and red is 5V - because in my case it was almost something completely different.

But after all the soldering is done, the rest is just stupid simple. I stuck the Nollie 8 in an empty hard drive bay, plugged it into a free motherboard USB header and powered it with two free SATA connectors, then plugged all my ARGB cables into the available channels.

If everything was wired properly - and in my case it was, then all the LEDs will go green when the computer is turned on. And sure enough...

We have lights!

All that was left was to install the configuration software, which for the Nollie 8 is OpenRGB. This software works with nearly every ARGB controller, both built-in and separate controllers. In order for it to work, you have to define what channels on your controller are being used along with the number of zones per channel. For example; the left side panel is plugged into Channel 5, it has a total of 24 LEDs, broken up into three 8 LED zones.

With all the zones configured, I could then start configuring effects. OpenRGB is kind of a tricky program to learn when it comes to building effects from scratch. So because I'm impatient, I just used the optional effects plugin. This adds a whole slew of new pre-configured effects that you can tweak to your exact liking. Everything from simple spectrum cycling, to reactive effects are all here, minus the bloat of other programs like SignalRGB or any of the motherboard vendor programs.

And that's the real beauty of ARGB: the ability to create and control multiple complex lighting zones using just three wires off a single controller. Compared to the factory AlienFX lighting, this required far less wiring complexity, is capable of much more intricate effects, and it runs on a wildly commonplace standard with open-source control options. You could pretty well adapt this to any old case, so long as there's adequate room around the old lighting diffusers to install strips.

Results may vary though, and in my case I don't think it's totally perfect. I get that "string of pearls" effect - where the individual LEDs are visible through the light diffusers instead of what appears to be a smooth gradient. This is because the the old diffusers aren't really capable of effectively spreading the light from LEDs mounted in this fashion. I can personally live with it, but it's definitely not something everyone would prefer.

Even then, I still think this conversion was a night and day improvement over the stock lighting. It's a lot of work for something is admittedly completely inconsequential to how the computer actually performs, but it really was the last thing keeping this computer from feeling to me like an actual finished product, opposed to just an old case with modern parts shoehorned inside it.

For the Area 51 R2; to say this fixed all my issues with AlienFX would be an understatement. It buried them deep. Now I just really hope that's truly the last time I ever have to crack this stupid tower open again while holding any tool other than a vacuum cleaner.