Is it worth upgrading to iCUE yet?

I am just wondering. LINK asked me to upgrade today but looking at the forum I am wary.

My PC has Corsair fans, psu and cpu cooler so I use LINK.

I stopped LINK updating because most updates caused more problems than they solved. I usually had to go backwards to prior releases.

So I am very wary of Corsair updates to be honest. I don't want to upgrade to something that has tons of bugs.

Hi Buddy, for the majority iCUE works fine and I zero issues my self. its gotta be worth the try dude and LINK is now End Of Life...

If you have non-corsair items, you may lose control of them. I have not found any way to actually setup easy profiles to control ANY of my non-corsair items.

 

It can not control fans on my motherboard, my video-cards, my power supply, or even the h110i cooler. There is no way to select changes, as far as I can tell, from the dashboard icon. (Where the LINK has three profiles to select, instantly.)

 

Though, it can see all the info from all devices. Because it is just reading that info from windows sys-info.

 

I instantly uninstalled it, due to inconvenience and being over half a GB 500+ MB for an install. Totally bloated software, for what little it actually does.

This forum is more for community support than anything else. If everything is working perfectly, then you won't see people come here and post that. During the BETA stages and early in it's release we saw a lot more complaints and bigger threads. People tend to post how much they like something on Reddit more so than here, though they also post issues as well.

 

In all I am very impressed with iCUE, they are putting their full support behind it and they engage in the community. If they didn't, then I wouldn't be a BETA tester. I find motherboard software tends to be a lot more bloated, more buggy, and frustrating.

 

iCUE has a lot of features:

1) RGB control and complex profile configurations for all iCUE compatible RGB devices

2) Fan Curve configuration based on different stats

3) Stats monitoring

4) Macro setup

5) Unified software for Corsair devices.

 

You can always try it and see how you like it.

Well I am not too bothered about controlling other stuff, I am more bothered about the Commander Pro's I have. Three of them, in three PC's that all use LINK too. I stopped updating LINK because honestly Corsiar tend to release stuff half-baked. Of course I will update to iCEU at some stage. I am just trying to work out when. I guess I may try it on one of my lesser PC's that has a Commander Pro. Does it pick up on LINK data or do I have to start again??

Well I am not too bothered about controlling other stuff, I am more bothered about the Commander Pro's I have. Three of them, in three PC's that all use LINK too. I stopped updating LINK because honestly Corsair tend to release stuff half-baked. Of course I will update to iCEU at some stage. I am just trying to work out when. I guess I may try it on one of my lesser PC's that has a Commander Pro. Does it pick up on LINK data or do I have to start again??

 

It doesn't import your fan curves. However, there is something to help with that. See here: [ame]

[/ame].

I never used LINK, just did some research.

 

To date I think the most advanced RGB lighting software is iCUE.

 

Here aside of some minor hiccups in the past is been working solid. Last version was an improvement to me CPU usage wise. Now when I close iCUE it uses zero CPU, previous versions used more. The corsair service uses up to 3% CPU but oscillates between zero and 3%.....previously it was 5% constantly. I think corsair can further optimize the service to make it use less CPU as they are aware of that now and seem to be actively improving that. (kudos!)

Honestly I am not interested in LED's right now. I use LINK to control Commander Pro's that are for cooling. My principle concern here is that Corsair are forever releasing software with critical bugs in it, and I don't want my PC to be completely messed up. I can do without LEDs because I don't have any, lol, but I can't do without cooling. It would be a disaster if something happens and it decides to turn the fans off at the wrong time.

I might add that I am disappointed that iCEU can't be used for monitoring a system that doesn't have Corsair gear. You could use LINK for that, and I used to install LINK on PC's as a matter of course just for consistency and monitoring.

But yes, I am really wary, most of the LINK "updates" had bugs in until I just stopped it automatically updating and stuck with a release that worked for me.

Mind you, I am considering one PC for some LEDs so I think moving to iCEU is something I want to do, I am just not sure when is a good time, lol.

The main ambition of iCUE was to unify the two existing control programs for peripherals (CUE 2) and internal devices (Link). To that same end, internal devices like fans and coolers are now capable of complex lighting patterns like in CUE 2. Since you don't have lighting effects to control and it doesn't seem like you have a Corsair keyboard either, there isn't an inherent advantage to upgrading at this point. The biggest change would be the UI. Obviously it looks different, some of the ways to interact are different, but the control options are essentially the same. You would be able to pull up long term monitoring graphs for each fan's activity, temp probes (if you are using them), and things like coolant temperature over time period from 1 minute to 1 day. That may be useful for 24/7 systems that's aren't monitored all the time or for making more critical observations.

 

It's not that iCUE "can't monitor non-Corsair gear". I'll guess that person was referring to the inability for iCUE to manage the RGB on an Asus/MSI/GA board, it can't control the lights of another fan, it can't change the settings on your Logitech mouse (duh), and multiple other obvious limitations that exist for all products of different brands. Clearly this person does not have a Commander Pro and that is where the fan control comes in. iCUE does this, just as with Link. The actual monitoring of hardware data from other sources (motherboard, VRM, PCH, drive temps, write speed, etc.) is still about the same as Link, albeit in a different visual form. Some may like it better or not, but the overall utility and reliability has not changed. Link was never the greatest monitoring tool for everything in your system and there are other free utilities for that, one of which you may already use. For things like HWiNFO, you must disable the monitoring of the Commander Pro within the HWiNFO program. This was already true with Link 4.9.xx and you must go back to Link version 4.8.3 or earlier to avoid this conflict. I have trouble with Aida and all iCUE versions, something that was not a problem with Link.

 

You probably need to make a self-assessment in regard to your willingness to change. If you like things as they stand and are not interested in having to adapt to a new visual style and essentially a new program, stay where you are. You don't seem particularly excited to make the switch and I can't see a clear advantage for to do so at this point without knowing more about how you use your system(s) or specific data concerns. It seems like consistency and reliability are the key things of interest and any change alters that dynamic, whereas at this point you have an existing track record with your current control scheme. Now surely at some point Microsoft will come along with one of these bi-annual updates completely changing how drivers are handled by the system and that will be the knife in the heart of Link, but until that moment I don't see a negative consequence for what you're doing. When that moment does come, don't install iCUE from the Link panel or update that way. Go to the Corsair website and download the current version of iCUE and make it a standalone install. The program physically replaces CUE 2 in the registry and Link will remain untouched, but passive and not usable with iCUE installed. Don't uninstall Link until to are sure you want to stay on the change and even then I would back up your CLink4 data file from your C drive. That will preserve all your settings and makes hopping back and forth between an iCUE and Link control much easier.

Honestly I am not interested in LED's right now. I use LINK to control Commander Pro's that are for cooling. My principle concern here is that Corsair are forever releasing software with critical bugs in it, and I don't want my PC to be completely messed up. I can do without LEDs because I don't have any, lol, but I can't do without cooling. It would be a disaster if something happens and it decides to turn the fans off at the wrong time.

 

Define critical bugs please. There are issues, yes ... but I haven't seen anything even close to what you are claiming here, even with the earliest pre-release versions of iCue.

 

I might add that I am disappointed that iCEU can't be used for monitoring a system that doesn't have Corsair gear. You could use LINK for that, and I used to install LINK on PC's as a matter of course just for consistency and monitoring.

iCUE has the same monitoring capabilities that Link had. It's actually based off of the Link code base. So ... I'm not sure where you are coming up with this.

 

But yes, I am really wary, most of the LINK "updates" had bugs in until I just stopped it automatically updating and stuck with a release that worked for me.

Mind you, I am considering one PC for some LEDs so I think moving to iCEU is something I want to do, I am just not sure when is a good time, lol.

 

Keep in mind that some of the iCUE codebase is based on Link. They didn't rewrite it from the ground up. So bug fixes for Link are already in iCUE. If you go by what you see on the forum, keep in mind that folks that aren't having issues rarely post. It's like watching the evening news ... if your entire impression of the US is from the evening news, you'd think that American streets are a war zone with bullets flying everywhere. And that's just not true.