Would you do this?

gillmanjr

Member
I'm curious if any of you would do what I am in the process of doing or if you think I'm crazy. Be honest, I don't care. Here's the story...

A little less than a month ago I bought an NZXT Kraken X62 AIO water cooler so I could OC my CPU farther, plus I am upgrading CPU soon. I compared the Kraken and the Corsair Hydro and chose the NZXT because of reviews. Part of operating this cooler is NZXT's "CAM" software which controls the lighting, pump and fan speeds, etc. You must have CAM running in your system tray for the cooler to work properly and frankly, I don't like the software.

A few days ago I bought a new keyboard and mouse, which I've been wanting to do for a while. I decided on a Corsair K70 and Sabre mouse (both of which are incredibly awesome btw). Corsair's software is called "iCue", which you also need to run if you want the RGB lighting and keys/mouseclicks set the way you want it. I like iCue more than NZXTs software, FYI.

Now maybe I'm just neurotic about this but I really hate having a million different programs running in the background and using up my system resources. It annoys me. Plus it forces you to learn/use all of those different programs to make changes. I realized yesterday that if I had bought a Corsair Hydro series cooler that I could also control it with the iCue software and wouldn't need something different. For that reason alone I just ordered the Corsair Hydro H150i and will be returning the NZXT. Luckily I am just within the return window for the Kraken.

Would any of you had done the same if you were in my position or do you think thats crazy?
 

Darren

Moderator
Staff member
The hassle of the return, exchange, uninstall of old cooler, and reinstall of new cooler is going to be way more time and effort wasted than maybe dealing with a second piece of software for a few extra seconds each day that probably isn't even blipping your performance except maybe at startup.

That was a terrible runon but about where I'm at lol. Water coolers are overrated IMO anyway.
 

beers

Moderator
Staff member
I kind of do that planning RGB components that integrate with Aura. Some of those prorgams have weird dependencies though such as the lightingcontrol.exe daemon for Aura tips off iRacing's anticheat.

If you don't mind the hassle of swapping it out then have at it. As per above it's a minor annoyance but could add up over time. I have a similar situation having to open EVGA's utility to change lighting on the GPU when the rest of my rig integrates in Aura, which is irritating, but the aggregate amount of time spent on it is pretty low.
 

Darren

Moderator
Staff member
I kind of do that planning RGB components that integrate with Aura. Some of those prorgams have weird dependencies though such as the lightingcontrol.exe daemon for Aura tips off iRacing's anticheat.

If you don't mind the hassle of swapping it out then have at it. As per above it's a minor annoyance but could add up over time. I have a similar situation having to open EVGA's utility to change lighting on the GPU when the rest of my rig integrates in Aura, which is irritating, but the aggregate amount of time spent on it is pretty low.
That's why I just set/buy everything in white. Only active RGB I have is my motherboard, makes it a lot simpler. :p

I can understand doing it from the onset, particularly stemming from your motherboard for RGB purposes. I personally don't think the return is worth that but if it does to you nothing wrong with that. The software for my keyboard gives me some weird issues sometimes, like recording entire paragraphs as macros and playing them back. Has led to a few awkward situations of my previous chats dropped and sent beyond my control. :D So I can understand wanting different software, was too late for me and I can deal.
 

gillmanjr

Member
See that’s the thing...to me it actually is worth the hassle. I would much rather deal with what amounts to a few hours of work now than to have this software running on my PC constantly for years. I hate clutter in my system tray. Come to think of it, this is one of the reasons why I started building my own PCs.
 

gillmanjr

Member
That's why I just set/buy everything in white. Only active RGB I have is my motherboard, makes it a lot simpler. :p

I do the same thing except I use red lighting. I set everything on a solid and dull red glow. I actually do this for scientific reason - look up the Purkinge effect on google or wikipedia. Basically red light allows the human eye to remain dark adjusted.
 

Darren

Moderator
Staff member
I do the same thing except I use red lighting. I set everything on a solid and dull red glow. I actually do this for scientific reason - look up the Purkinge effect on google or wikipedia. Basically red light allows the human eye to remain dark adjusted.

My immediate peripherals are black and red but computer itself is white.

Same reason a lot of cars used orange dash lights before all these screens.
 

_Kyle_

Well-Known Member
I do the same thing except I use red lighting. I set everything on a solid and dull red glow. I actually do this for scientific reason - look up the Purkinge effect on google or wikipedia. Basically red light allows the human eye to remain dark adjusted.
That's actually kinda cool.

I don't really like the aesthetic of red but I'll have to try this out. How well does it work for you?
 

gillmanjr

Member
That's actually kinda cool.

I don't really like the aesthetic of red but I'll have to try this out. How well does it work for you?

It works. Most people have experience with this. Its the reason why tail lights on cars are red. At night they don't cause our eyes to have to re adjust to the dark every time we see them. With RGB lighting on a PC its not quite the same thing because you are staring at a screen anyway, therefore your eyes are never going to be dark adjusted. But you will find that red lighting puts less strain on your eyes in the dark. Therefore it seems more comforting in the dark. I actually tried changing my whole color scheme to sky blue to match my NZXT fan controller LCD (which can't be changed) but I don't like it at night, its too disruptive.
 

_Kyle_

Well-Known Member
Is it just me or am I the only one who gives zero effs about RGB stuff going on inside the computer case?
Nope, it isn't just you.

I don't care about the flashy lights. I think the all black builds look the coolest, actually.
 

gillmanjr

Member
Is it just me or am I the only one who gives zero effs about RGB stuff going on inside the computer case?

No, I don't care at all about lighting inside my case either. All of my new stuff has no lighting whatsoever...I bought plain Corsair DDR4 3200 RAM and the RTX 2080 I bought doesn't have a single LED light on it anywhere. Even the NZXT Kraken cooler I have with the cool infinite mirror pump that everyone loves...I keep the lighting effects shut off. You can't even see inside my case without pulling it out and looking. Since its a full tower there is no way I can put it on top of my desk, it would look ridiculous.

My main lighting is only ambient lighting...LED strips behind my desk, LEDs on the bottom of my new monitor, keyboard and mouse. All set to solid Red. I'll post up a pic later.

The only way I would want to display the inside of my PC is if I built a custom water cooling loop for both CPU and GPU. It would be fun to build for sure but I doubt I will ever spend that kind of money on a PC.
 
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