Wondering if it happened to you? When we want to buy an RGBW LED strip with 12V input voltage version, it is almost impossible to find it. Led power supply with 12V is easy to find for RGB light strip, but do you know why dose RGBW strip need 24V power supply to drive?

Firstly, let's have a look at the RGB LED strip light, the current is divided into 3 channels at the negative electrode, and all channels are combined at the positive electrode. That is to say, if current for each channel is 3A, then 3 channels are 9A in total, it is almost no okay to loading 9A on a wire at the positive electrode.

Now, let's pay attention to RGBW strip light. Take a example, under the 12V working voltage, the wattage is 19.2 W/m, a 5 meter length strip light is total 96w, current is 8A. It pass through the 4 negative wires then merge into a positive wire. Obviously 8A current is too large a load for a normal positive wire, unless use a very thick wire.

In consideration of there are 5 parallel wires for a RGBW strip light, if technician use a very thick wire, it will be very inconvenient for PCB board welding with 5 parallel wires. So if RGBW lights are driven by 24V dc led drivers, the total current is only 4 amps（96watt/24vdc=4A）,  it does not need to be too thick for the positive wire, so that 5 parallel wires are available for welding. That is why we buy the RGBW LED strip always with 24V voltage version. When selecting a led driver power supply, a 24V power source is used.