H100i without iCUE?

Okay... so, I am going to just go out on a limb and give my honest opinion that iCUE is actually the most awful thing I have ever used.

My issues:

Too many cords > No instructions for people not wanting to use iCUE.

No way to set fan curves, it's literally, quiet, loud, louder, or fixed > Also no way to actually control the pump without iCUE it seems... Was idling at 40C then finally messed with the iCUE settings to get the pump on balanced which dropped 10C.

Corsair Gaming Headset Drivers and Display Adapter?

So how much of this extra is necessary? Could I just use the motherboard leds a fan splitter/controller of my own and just use my motherboard to control all this stuff that iCUE does literally miserably... the balanced and extreme fan settings are practically the same speeds.

Like what is un-necessary... obviously the usb header for sure... the SATA? And I can't remember currently how it was, but was there not an RGB header for the pump that could potentially be connected to the board and the fans? I literally only use one color.

And iCUE seems to be just the absolute worst configuration tool I have ever seen. I literally had the pump set to balanced in the BIOS, but was running 40-45C at idle... thinking maybe I just did a bad thermal paste application, but going into iCUE I noticed that it had it set to quiet, a change to balanced dropped about 10-12C instantly.

TL;DR:

How much is necessary to use only BIOS controllers for pumps and fans, completely getting rid of the need for iCUE? Especially because just looking at it I notice that the connector going to the CPU_FAN header only has one cord...?