iCUE 3.27.68 consumes about 20W

I have the latest version of iCUE installed.

 

Problem:

When iCUE is started (minimized to system tray) my system consumes additional 20W of power. As soon as I close iCUE completely, energy consumption is reduced by this amount.

The Corsair Service seems to be no problem. It has no impact on energy consumption.

 

Power consumption idle:

with iCUE: 120W

without: 100W

 

So to my question:

How can I have iCUE running in system tray (I need it for my MM800) without wasting that much energy?

 

The contolled devices are:

• Corsair XH850i
  
• 2x Corsair ML140 RGB Pro (RGB+RPM)
  
• 2x Corsair ML140 Pro (RPM)
  
• 2x Fractal Design Dynamic X2 GP-14 (RPM)
  
• Corsair CL-8930002 RGB LED Lighting PRO (4 light strips)
  
• Corsair Commander Pro
  
• Corsair Lightning Pro
  
• Corsair MM800 RGB Polaris
  
• Corsair K70 RGB
  

 

My system:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 3900X

MB: Gigabyte AORUS X570 Pro

RAM: 4x16 GB Crucial Ballistix Sport LT 3000CL15

GPU: inno3d GTX1080 iChill x4

PCU: Corsair HX850i

Sound: Soundblaster AE-9

Edited April 2, 2020 by mamoel

The answer is by having Corsair work to lower CPU usage..

This program with all the associated services will proudly eat up 8 - 10% CPU usage on a high end gaming PC even if you set your lights to static which makes no sense (and condoleances for that MM800 default RGB when iCUE is not running.. i got rid of mine for that very reason).

 

That said, the LEDs themselves can use way more than 20W, so if your real concern is saving energy, well.. set them to off ^^'

If energy saving would be the most important thing for me, my CPU wouldn't be a Ryzen 3900X.

I'm just very disappointed, that iCUE makes my system consume 20% more power without giving any benefit (except for the MM800).

 

I saved every setting now hardware profiles now, removed iCUE from autostart and exchanged the MM800 with my good old Roccat HIRO.

 

But hey Corsair team...this is very very sad :sigh!:

I did a quick test with HWinfo.

Leaving the computer at Idle and reading average CPU power for 5 min.

Then redoing the same thing with icue closed and corsair service stopped.

The difference is only 4 watts (11.7W with iCue, 8.7W without).

If yours really goes up to 20W, maybe you have the same bug i encounter once a day with the latest version, being that CPU usage gets maxed out on the cores iCUE uses. I have to kill the task and restart it to go back to "normal" CPU usage.

 

I don't know how you measure total system power, but if it's through the power supply reporting, i wouldn't trust it too much. it looks.. very rounded up.. sometimes output power is even higher than input.. they really give a ballpark measure it seems

Neither 11.7W nor 8.7W can be the total power reading from your PSU?

So how did you measure that?

 

I have a plug that I put in between that shows me the current power drawn from my PC.

No, i was giving CPU power usage :)

 

total power used by iCUE is hard to measure since the LEDs themselves cycle a couple of colors constantly.

How did you get that 20W delta? Closing iCue with LEDs still running in hardware mode? LEDs off?

 

Edit : The only way i got such high power difference was by closing iCue, having the LEDs come off since they pull quite a few amps from the 5V rail.

83W without iCue, LEDs off

100W with iCue and LEDs running (8 HD120 - 140, and 6 strips)

Edited April 4, 2020 by LeDoyen

I measured total system power with the special plug.

All LEDs are active with the same settings once as hardware profile without iCUE and then with iCUE opened (minimized to system tray).

Then i can't find why iCUE uses so much.. I hope someone from Corsair pops in.

In my case i only found a 3W power usage which is already massive for a RGB control software :dunno:

It may be a problem with AMD Ryzen. Keeping all 12 Cores 'awake' consumes a lot of power.

It may be a problem with AMD Ryzen. Keeping all 12 Cores 'awake' consumes a lot of power.

 

Yes, actually it's the main issue between iCUE and Ryzen CPUs.

It seems the software costantly pulls the cores to go in turbo state. If I keep Ryzen Master opened and close iCUE, the Vcore istantly drops under 1, while with the software alive (windowed or in SysTray) it bumps to 1.4.

 

It's something reported by many users here, let's hope it can be fixed in the future (but I'm not so confident).

 

Baio

Yes, actually it's the main issue between iCUE and Ryzen CPUs.

It seems the software costantly pulls the cores to go in turbo state. If I keep Ryzen Master opened and close iCUE, the Vcore istantly drops under 1, while with the software alive (windowed or in SysTray) it bumps to 1.4.

 

It's something reported by many users here, let's hope it can be fixed in the future (but I'm not so confident).

 

Baio

I should have tried googling for "Ryzen icue" before...

 

@Corsair

This is a known problem for such a long time and you do absolutely nothing?

I should have tried googling for "Ryzen icue" before...

 

@Corsair

This is a known problem for such a long time and you do absolutely nothing?

 

Corsair MO.....have been waiting for iCUE to be fixed since 2018. I would not hold my breathe on this. I have moved away from mostly all corsair products, minus my water cooler for this exact reason.