00:00:00
so if you already have an Asus
00:00:01
motherboard or you're thinking about
00:00:02
purchasing an Aus motherboard and you
00:00:04
want to know a little bit more about RGB
00:00:06
lighting control using that motherboard
00:00:08
we're going to get into it here real
00:00:10
quick now when we talk about motherboard
00:00:11
RGB control what we're talking about is
00:00:13
the motherboard itself is the RGB
00:00:15
controller it'll have a number of
00:00:17
different RGB elements uh meaning it has
00:00:20
some RGB lighting built into it maybe
00:00:22
you're going to want to check your
00:00:24
specific model to be sure most Asus
00:00:26
boards are going to have two different
00:00:27
types of ports it's going to have an RGB
00:00:29
header
00:00:30
which is going to be a 12vt RGB header
00:00:33
meaning it's going to have four pins a
00:00:35
12vt signal a red green and a blue
00:00:37
signal it's a four pin connector the
00:00:39
header that most of us are using and are
00:00:41
interested in is the 5vt argb header uh
00:00:44
which is a three pin connector uh the
00:00:47
connector actually has four positions on
00:00:49
it but the one pin is not present and on
00:00:51
the connector it's blanked out so that's
00:00:53
a 5volt signal uh and it's got a data
00:00:56
signal and a ground so the software you
00:00:58
want to become familiar with if you're
00:00:59
talking about Asus RGB lighting control
00:01:02
is Armory crate is the primary one now
00:01:05
Armory crate includes the aura sync
00:01:07
software there is also Aura Creator out
00:01:09
there and what Aura Creator allows you
00:01:11
to do is create some very customized
00:01:13
lighting sequences now AA Creator is its
00:01:15
own piece of software it's not required
00:01:17
for you to use it uh oryn has some basic
00:01:20
built-in functions for you to do but
00:01:22
really to get the full potential out of
00:01:23
it you're going to want to get Aura
00:01:25
Creator as well the other piece of
00:01:27
software you might want is AI Suite now
00:01:29
what that does for me primarily is does
00:01:31
fan control because Armory crate does
00:01:34
very basic fan control it just gives you
00:01:36
like you know slow medium fast whereas
00:01:39
the AI Suite you can then go in there
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and create custom fan curves things like
00:01:42
that in addition to using AA sync and
00:01:45
fan expert you may have controls over
00:01:47
your fans and RGB lighting using the
00:01:49
UEFI bios I recommend that you check
00:01:52
your specific motherboard for what
00:01:54
options you have in the Bios as they may
00:01:56
differ from motherboard to motherboard
00:01:57
but be aware that there might be
00:01:59
something there check it out now to
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install the software just do a quick
00:02:02
search for Armory crate and you'll be
00:02:04
able to find it or go to asus's website
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and do a search there once you get to
00:02:07
the download site it's actually going to
00:02:09
download Armory crate so go ahead and
00:02:11
get that downloaded and install it it's
00:02:13
a fairly simple install so this brings
00:02:15
up a screen where you can choose from a
00:02:17
couple of different options the one I
00:02:19
would recommend that you do choose is
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install or a Creator so just a really
00:02:22
quick tour of the Armory crate software
00:02:25
obviously it lands you on the dashboard
00:02:26
here which is just going to give you
00:02:27
some basic information about your
00:02:29
Hardware where you know what your
00:02:31
current speeds of your cores are on your
00:02:33
CPU uh some GPU information and uh in
00:02:37
addition to you know what speed your RAM
00:02:39
is running pretty basic over to the
00:02:40
right side you get just some quick
00:02:42
panels now you can move these panels
00:02:43
around and kind of organize this as you
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want uh obviously you kind of get some
00:02:48
of your profile information your game
00:02:50
launchers uh things like that you know
00:02:53
some basic statistics over here as well
00:02:55
now the primary one that we're going to
00:02:57
talk about today is Aura sync so you do
00:02:59
kind of get get a quick selector panel
00:03:01
here and going through these these are
00:03:03
very basic of course you can do static
00:03:05
from this window here you really can't
00:03:06
change any of the parameters of the
00:03:08
effect so but static will just set it to
00:03:11
a single color of course you get
00:03:13
breathing strobing of course they're
00:03:15
they're very basic uh you get a color
00:03:17
cycle feature you know which is just
00:03:19
going to cycle through a bunch of
00:03:20
different colors on the left here you
00:03:22
get all the icons of different things
00:03:24
you can do with an Armory crate
00:03:26
obviously I is the dashboard that we
00:03:28
just looked at the next one down is to
00:03:31
select your devices and we must first
00:03:33
update this device to continue update
00:03:36
now this brings us to the update Center
00:03:39
which is another thing the Armory crate
00:03:41
does now we need to go ahead and update
00:03:44
the z590 Wii Gundam Edition motherboard
00:03:47
so that should be up to date now let's
00:03:49
go back to the device now let's talk
00:03:53
about what you can configure here
00:03:54
shutdown effect is the lighting sequence
00:03:56
that will take place when or a sync is
00:03:58
not running so basically a hardware mode
00:04:01
and so you can select from all of the
00:04:02
basic stuff here as well from here you
00:04:04
can configure the headers themselves now
00:04:06
the addressable headers will be the
00:04:08
5volt headers as we talked about earlier
00:04:11
uh you can do a Gen 2 uh device on here
00:04:14
and it should Auto detect that you can
00:04:16
rescan for those changes uh or you can
00:04:19
go ahead and manually select the number
00:04:20
of LEDs here this motherboard has two
00:04:23
headers your motherboard may vary in how
00:04:25
many headers it has might have one or
00:04:28
more some motherboards aren't going to
00:04:29
have any so if you're wondering whether
00:04:31
it will do RGB just take a look at the
00:04:33
owner's manual download the pdf online
00:04:36
and see doesn't have any AR argb headers
00:04:39
the addressable RGB headers or any RGB
00:04:42
headers which are the 12vt ones so but
00:04:44
you can configure both ports here of
00:04:46
course you can go to the RGB headers and
00:04:50
this is a 12volt uh connection now what
00:04:53
that means in short is that uh you're
00:04:55
not going to have individual colors on
00:04:57
the Strip itself and in some cases you
00:05:00
do need to calibrate it so if you hit
00:05:02
the calibration it's going to ask you
00:05:04
what color that do you see and you're
00:05:06
going to go next and then you want to
00:05:08
tell it what light do you see first so
00:05:11
in this case I see red first so we'll
00:05:13
hit next and then it's going to ask you
00:05:15
what color you see next which is going
00:05:17
to be
00:05:18
blue next and finally what color last is
00:05:24
green I've seen this done in a number of
00:05:27
different ways with different pieces of
00:05:28
software this this one's actually pretty
00:05:30
well done that it just asks you what
00:05:32
colors are there anyways you're all done
00:05:33
with that that's the only setup that you
00:05:36
can do from here the next icon down is
00:05:38
AA sync which was one of the main
00:05:40
features that we want this for and so
00:05:42
the first screen that comes up is sync
00:05:44
devices now you may have a whole lot
00:05:46
more devices here because a lot of the
00:05:48
Asus products are going to show up here
00:05:50
their peripherals and memory and RAM and
00:05:52
you know all sorts of stuff might be
00:05:54
here there may be a lot of features
00:05:55
within some of those devices uh that I
00:05:58
just don't have access to them all so
00:05:59
we're not going to be able to go through
00:06:00
them but this should give you a basic
00:06:02
overview now sync devices means that you
00:06:05
can sync certain devices together in
00:06:08
this case I've got the motherboard
00:06:10
elements and the addressable LED strips
00:06:13
together that's all you really are going
00:06:15
to do in the sync devices now if there
00:06:17
was a particular device you didn't want
00:06:18
to play in that you could uncheck it
00:06:21
does have a performance mode if the
00:06:23
lighting effects are kind of laggy on
00:06:25
there you can increase that I've not had
00:06:27
a situation where I've really had to
00:06:28
play with that I haven't noticed any
00:06:30
difference but here is where you can
00:06:32
also configure uh Philips Hue if you
00:06:35
have some Phillips Hue devices out there
00:06:37
you can go ahead and connect that here
00:06:40
okay but Aura effects this is the main
00:06:42
screen that we're here to talk about
00:06:44
today so go ahead and switch over to
00:06:46
this this looks a lot like the basic uh
00:06:49
screen that we saw on the front end but
00:06:52
this allows you to change the individual
00:06:55
parameters of each one so if I go static
00:06:57
of course I can change uh the color just
00:07:00
click on the color gives you you know
00:07:02
the basic color selection wheel and we
00:07:04
can go ahead and change that around to
00:07:06
what we want blue
00:07:08
purple red so on and so forth you can
00:07:10
put some standard colors and then custom
00:07:12
colors and other things you can do here
00:07:14
you can also manually modify the RGB uh
00:07:17
numerical values should you choose to do
00:07:20
that okay so very basic kind of what we
00:07:22
would come to expect you can also do a
00:07:24
gradient depending on the device that's
00:07:26
out there uh meaning you can change two
00:07:29
color and it will create a gradient for
00:07:31
you uh we get a breathing function which
00:07:33
is largely just the same thing you know
00:07:36
we can set a single color we can do it
00:07:38
random you which is going to change the
00:07:40
color every time it comes up we can do a
00:07:42
gradient and we can also change the
00:07:43
speed on these we have
00:07:46
strobing color cycle this is just a slow
00:07:49
cycle through all of the different
00:07:50
colors that are available out there
00:07:52
there's really no settings for this not
00:07:53
even a speed or anything rainbow this is
00:07:57
a quote the rainbow puke that everybody
00:07:58
talks about about there are times that
00:08:00
it actually looks pretty good to kind of
00:08:01
show it off and see how it looks and
00:08:04
from here there are a bunch of different
00:08:05
patterns that you can choose from some
00:08:08
of these look better than the others but
00:08:10
you just have to kind of find what fits
00:08:11
for you um I didn't mind the rainbow
00:08:14
function I like that it has a couple of
00:08:16
additional patterns here other than what
00:08:18
you know we've come to expect of course
00:08:20
you can
00:08:21
change uh the speed of the effect and so
00:08:24
on and so
00:08:26
forth Starry kn I do personally kind of
00:08:30
like Star KN but we can uh change the
00:08:33
background color say we want it
00:08:37
blue and of course the effect we can
00:08:40
make it
00:08:41
random and so it's just kind of a blue
00:08:44
background with all the effects on there
00:08:46
and of course we can change the speed
00:08:48
but you can select music and then any
00:08:50
music that's playing on your PC kind of
00:08:52
has a corresponding light effect so very
00:08:54
cool that works all right we do have
00:08:57
Smart RGB lighting uh which makes this a
00:08:59
little bit useful uh CPU temperature I
00:09:02
personally don't use this all this much
00:09:04
this is a really good indicator if your
00:09:06
temperatures are rising above a certain
00:09:08
point uh you can also select CPU usage
00:09:11
adaptive color meaning you can kind of
00:09:13
change it to represent which on your
00:09:15
screen you can customize this as to what
00:09:18
you want but it looks like you can
00:09:19
really only do one box so just depending
00:09:22
on what you
00:09:25
want you know if you have a particular
00:09:27
application or something going on in
00:09:29
screen that just takes place on one
00:09:30
little area at least it's here that you
00:09:32
can do it and you can save that that's
00:09:35
that lower left
00:09:38
corner and then basically anything that
00:09:40
occurs within that zone over here as we
00:09:43
move this over uh the other function is
00:09:46
dark off which just turns all the lights
00:09:48
off on the system now Advanced effects
00:09:52
what these are is these are the effects
00:09:55
that you've created with aura Creator
00:09:57
the other option here is ingame lighting
00:09:59
effects if you want a particular game
00:10:01
that's uh compatible with AA sync to
00:10:03
control your lighting uh this needs to
00:10:05
be on it's on by default so I believe
00:10:07
there's a corresponding setting in most
00:10:09
games that you have to uh turn that
00:10:11
lighting effect on also if you want to
00:10:13
integrate this into Corsair IQ this also
00:10:15
needs to be on and that's what will
00:10:17
allow IQ to talk to this motherboard so
00:10:19
if you go back to Aura sync over here
00:10:22
and we go to AA effect and we click the
00:10:23
AA Creator
00:10:25
button it will load another application
00:10:27
for us Ora creator
00:10:30
you have to accept the licenses for
00:10:34
this okay and I agree welcome to Ora
00:10:38
Creator it's got quite a bit of help in
00:10:40
there I don't really want to do anything
00:10:43
so we'll maximize that now over here on
00:10:45
the left hand side uh you'll see a lot
00:10:47
of the same effects that we've talked
00:10:49
about there's maybe one or two new ones
00:10:51
there I don't have any devices available
00:10:54
but if I go to PC components I can see
00:10:56
my motherboard and my headers so this
00:10:59
took me a little bit to figure out but
00:11:01
you have to select which device you want
00:11:04
and then come up here to set as layer
00:11:06
and then it brings a new layer down here
00:11:08
on the timeline now if you're familiar
00:11:10
with video editing software this isn't
00:11:13
extremely different than that but you
00:11:15
could go ahead and select each device
00:11:17
and select each device as its own layer
00:11:20
now what you can do is you can drag and
00:11:22
drop lighting effects into this timeline
00:11:25
so if we take static here we can drop it
00:11:27
in we can reset size the time so save
00:11:30
for 2 seconds and then over here on the
00:11:32
far right we can change what lighting
00:11:34
parameters surround this so if we want
00:11:36
it to be green for that long I do wish
00:11:38
it gave you more of an indication down
00:11:40
here what it was going to do but you can
00:11:42
drag and drop these all around
00:11:46
here and you get the basic idea and then
00:11:49
from here there's some you know play
00:11:50
buttons you know it kind of gives you a
00:11:53
visual representation up here as to what
00:11:55
it's going to do and so it's a great way
00:11:58
to to kind of just custom create
00:12:01
anything so of course you can rename it
00:12:03
so layer three let's put motherboard
00:12:07
whatever you get the idea you can kind
00:12:09
of customize it get your whole timeline
00:12:11
out uh you can zoom in and out of the
00:12:14
timeline as you get
00:12:18
going then once you're done with this
00:12:19
and you have everything the way that you
00:12:21
want it you can save and apply and we'll
00:12:23
save it as a file name so let's
00:12:25
put Hardware
00:12:27
artisan
00:12:29
okay now we have a new lighting element
00:12:32
called Hardware Artis now if I go back
00:12:34
to AA sync you can see that I have
00:12:35
Hardware Artisan selected here and it
00:12:38
will go ahead and apply that lighting
00:12:40
effect and you know so on and so forth
00:12:43
and you can make those pretty lengthy
00:12:45
and do whatever you want select all the
00:12:47
different colors whatever sequences
00:12:49
anyways play around with or Creator it's
00:12:51
got some pretty cool functions to it I
00:12:53
like the concept of it in IQ you'll need
00:12:56
to come over here to settings and then
00:12:58
go to plugins now I've already got it
00:13:00
done but you'll need to install the Asus
00:13:02
plugin then from here the Asus
00:13:05
motherboard should show up and you're
00:13:07
basically just going to get the
00:13:09
different components here so I've got
00:13:10
you know three back plate uh lighting
00:13:12
elements and the RGB header it's not
00:13:15
specific to whether that's 12vt or 5vt
00:13:18
I've had a really hard time getting this
00:13:20
to run at all at at times it's worked
00:13:24
but I need to play around with this a
00:13:26
little bit more but the idea being is
00:13:27
that you should be able to select these
00:13:30
and then you know click the lighting
00:13:31
layer and assign whatever you want to it
00:13:34
on this PC I've got lots of software to
00:13:35
control lighting from all the different
00:13:37
manufacturers I may have some sort of
00:13:39
conflict in here I've got it all kind of
00:13:41
shut down or I did anyways but even with
00:13:43
that with everything shut down I've
00:13:45
still had kind of a hard time getting it
00:13:46
to go but this is the integration and
00:13:49
this is the way that I personally would
00:13:51
use it and a compelling reason to maybe
00:13:53
buy an Asus motherboard um I believe
00:13:56
maybe this will work with MSI as well
00:13:57
but I need to explore that
00:13:59
is if you could control the internal
00:14:01
lighting elements with this that would
00:14:03
be really cool because oftentimes that's
00:14:05
the only thing I need like on my main PC
00:14:08
over here that's got a gigabyte
00:14:09
motherboard in it I've got to use the
00:14:11
gigabyte software to just control that
00:14:13
internal uh lighting element let me know
00:14:16
in the comments below if you've used the
00:14:18
corser integration uh for Asus
00:14:20
motherboards and whether it's worked for
00:14:21
you let's go back to tools real quick
00:14:23
now one thing I want to talk about real
00:14:24
quick is you get just basic fan control
00:14:27
here if you go back to the dashboard all
00:14:30
you really get is silent standard turbo
00:14:32
and full speed but that's it you don't
00:14:35
get any fan curves or anything in here
00:14:37
in order to get more control over it you
00:14:39
need to install this AI Suite so let's
00:14:41
go back over to
00:14:43
tools uh over to utility and let's
00:14:45
install AI Suite but once you get AI
00:14:48
Suite opened it gives you a number of
00:14:50
different things you can do but fan
00:14:51
control is the one thing I wanted to
00:14:52
talk about and you get this fan expert
00:14:55
for over here and from here you can
00:14:59
control all the different headers on
00:15:00
your motherboard AO pump chassis fan 3
00:15:03
chassis fan 2 one uh yours is going to
00:15:07
vary depending on what motherboard
00:15:08
manufacturer you have now it wants me to
00:15:11
do the fan tuning section runs the fans
00:15:13
at vary different speeds to try to get
00:15:15
an idea of what the minimum and maximums
00:15:17
are out there but it gives you all the
00:15:20
hot Keys here and then of course you can
00:15:22
tune the fans and it looks like this
00:15:24
screen's going to be in your way until
00:15:25
you actually go do it and of course you
00:15:28
get some profiles and things like that
00:15:30
that you can do uh let's go to Fan
00:15:33
chassis I think this was on
00:15:37
three but if you then come in here you
00:15:40
can highlight one of these two windows
00:15:41
and from here you can come into the
00:15:43
graphs and you can kind of adjust and
00:15:45
create your own custom curves you can
00:15:47
change the fan spin up time spin down
00:15:50
time and you'll determine on and there's
00:15:54
a couple of other little things you can
00:15:55
do here you you can actually adjust
00:15:58
these now there's AI Suite has a couple
00:16:00
of other different functions which we're
00:16:02
not really going to go to I really just
00:16:03
wanted to show you the fan expert here
00:16:06
so just be aware of that that that's
00:16:07
where this is I hope that's helped you
00:16:10
make a decision whether you want to use
00:16:11
Asus motherboards for RGB control let me
00:16:15
know in the comments below what you
00:16:16
think about that what your experiences
00:16:18
with it are and uh that is going to do
00:16:21
it for today thanks for watching