PC Building

[BigAl01]

These past few years I have been trying to buy components (mice, keyboards, RAM, etc.) that support Corsair's iCUE software integration.  Maybe I've become an RGB junkie of sorts, but I find the software works very well to tie things together with visual themes.  Besides that, you can monitor all sorts of things and even set up your devices for that 'personal' touch.  This video explains the things you can do with iCUE if you haven't yet tried it.

This is a nice setup. Not mine of course.

[Elysianbridges]

I once tried ICUE. I was not the biggest fan. Truly I have a hard time appreciating a lot of the RGB software. I will give an honorable mention to Signal and OpenRGB. I’d appreciate OpenRGB more however it doesn’t enjoy synchronizing with my particular build very well. Signal works well enough though I find their subscription service a bit nonsensical. 

[BigAl01]

I have found that iCUE has been getting better and better over the past year.  I really like it, especially for my AIO display where I can run GIF images.

[Elysianbridges]

I’d actually not mind trying it out again. May have to! 

[johnnyenglish]

I ran in the past with the plugin for it to talk with Armoury Crate, I had it for fans but since I changed to noctua. Only Armoury Crate.

The only downside I've had was CPU occupancy, the rest was amazingly good.

Task manager showed a constant 3 to 5% CPU usage..... 

[BigAl01]

What do you mean by 'CPU occupancy'?  Do you mean software running in the background?

[Hiramabiff]

Only thing I don’t like it I can’t seem to get it to work with a Msi motherboard.  Msi and ique don’t like each other it seems

[HOOK55]

Can you have ICUE and ASUS AURA installed at the same time? Just run them independently when you choose?

[BigAl01]

I believe that I have both running on two of my computers.  One problem that can arise with multiple software modules that I have found is with the mouse (talking about just the Kensington driver and Microsoft driver).  I would set the cursor speed in Windows, then the next time I booted the computer it was back to the faster speed.  It took me a few reboots to realize it was the Kensington driver setting it to the faster speed when that driver initialized.  So the lessons learned is to use one software module for changing the settings when there are components (say the fan speeds) that could be controlled by two or more drivers.

[jaandoh]

Upon completion of my new build I tried it and it seemed to crash regularly on the ddr portion.

I have a ram cooler but haven't installed it so I couldn't understand why it kept crashing.

Since I did a full re-install of the chipset drivers everything seems okay, but I cannot set the fan curves, or the fan curves don't get applied. 

I very much loved the old corsair link software which operated faultlessly for many years... 

I'm using the corsair commander hardware module which came with the cappelix AIO... 

Any advice on setting the fan curves would be appreciated... 

Also I'm missing the temp sensor cable and corsair wasn't very helpful there, they referred me back to the seller, scan.... 

Next time I will stick to NZXT, who are much more consumer friendly... 

[ajlueke]

Since my PC is out in the living room, any sort of additional ambient light is a no-no.  So I typically do not run any RGB at all, and even if there is, the case panels tend to be solid so no one would see it. 

[BigAl01]

I do have one computer with solid side panels that none the less has RGB components inside.  I can see a bit of the RGB out the back but I am missing most of the visuals.  The iCUE still controls the mouse and I have a Razer RGB mousepad to make me feel at home.

Inside, my AVP rebuild has some RGB components....

...but with the side panels on (painted by my son Tom), you don't see the lights.

The current configuration. Note the RGB glow out the back of the computer case.

[jaandoh]

I'm liking that RGB out the back, it's almost like ambient lighting... 

I like the case too... ❤️

One thing I found was that the nzxt Noctis 450 case was easier to work with than the corsair icue 5000x...

That's purely a personal opinion. 

[BigAl01]

You might like to see the other side panel.  Now you see why I cannot just let this case go.  It's a work of art from my son Tom.

The Alien creature was painted by my son Tom.

The EL panel still works, and it illuminates the AVP-R letters I made with a stencil.

[SpitfireXXL]

without it I cannot get surround on my headset

[mengelag]

Not at all. I'm also not running any RGB on the Corsair AIO or Fans on my second system. I am running a bios curve for the fans.

[krprice84]

iCue is literally THE WORST software that has ever been created by a company. THE WORST.

I cannot fathom how Corsair could ever release iCue to the public, sell products that are COMPLETELY RESTRICTED to it, and not be sued into oblivion!

I have built up an awesome gaming rig, and I (stupidly) used a whole bunch of corsair products with it. I used the H150i AIO, I used their lighting triangles, I used their QX120 fans (9 of them!) along with the system hubs, I have a commander core xt, and a number of other products. I even used their RAM for a while (got rid of that when I realized how crappy it really is, and how low quality the RAM chips that they use really are!).

I've just decided to sell all of my corsair hardware (likely at a pretty big loss), and replace it with other stuff. The AIO doesn't perform badly, unfortunately, but I absolutely refuse to continue to try to troubleshoot this garbage software, and because corsair is a horrible company, they've locked down their hardware so that NOBODY can develop aftermarket/open source software for it. they've literally locked themselves (and their customers) out of ever having a halfway decent software solution to control their overpriced hardware.

Nope, NEVER AGAIN for me for corsair. and I would recommend HIGHLY that anyone who's looking to build a nice looking system steer FAR CLEAR of corsair, if you actually want to be able to control your RGB lighting.

The program constantly crashes, it is incompatible with hwinfo64 (and most other hardware monitoring apps); when you run hwinfo64, it basically has to fight iCue for access to the hardware data, which causes the fans to sometimes go out of control, and it causes the hardware monitoring for iCue to be even less reliable (I never thought that was even possible!).

I am literally TERRIFIED to actually use my system, because I know that at any time, iCue could have crashed without telling me, which could leave me with no real control over my system cooling, and no notice that this has actually occurred. 

Again, please, do not buy corsair hardware if you want to have a system that doesn't give you daily heachaches. Literally anything else would be better. Lian Li makes some awesome looking fans that are similar in design philosophy to the QX120 fans by corsair, but they aren't locked in to a horrible program in order to control them.

[Triplexbee]

Relax a little maybe. 

Sure, icue sucks but you're not going to lose your system if it don't flash nice and your aio will take care of itself without icue.