Anyone know of plans for an rgb power supply? And how do you like iCUE so far?

Hi guys,

 

I recently built a new gaming system and am giving my old one to my step son. I'm a fan of RGB (don't hate me!) and currently have a k95 platinum, several RGB ML fans, a liquid cooling unit, and a few RGB strips (all made by corsair). I need to get a new power supply and would like one that can connect via usb to the computer to show how much power the various components (vid card, cpu, drives, etc.) are using - mostly just out of curiosity.

 

I honestly wasn't going to go with a corsair power supply due to the negative stuff I've read about the link software combined with a lot of issues I've had with CUE over the years, but having recently checked out iCUE, I dig what I see so far and am thinking about getting a corsair power supply (with usb connector) along with the commander pro (since apparently - and somewhat surprisingly - iCUE can't do much with my fans aside from changing color without the commander pro, and it doesn't even recognize the liquid cooler at all).

 

So what I'm curious about is the aforementioned question: does anyone know if Corsair has any plans to release an rgb power supply anytime soon? I haven't really found any info online with respect to that, but given the general direction corsair has been going, I figure it's somewhere on their to-do list. My current/old power supply works fine, but I'll need a new one when I give my old rig to my step son and am trying to decide whether to go ahead and purchase what's available now, or give it a couple of months if Corsair has something in the works.

 

And more generally, for those of you who are using iCUE to manage several Corsair products (including fans, liquid coolers, power supplies, or anything else) what is your experience of it so far? I'd like to imagine that Corsair has upped their software game to match their hardware game, but I am admittedly a bit skeptical.

 

Thanks ahead of time for your responses!

RGB PSU!!!!

 

It's been asked for!. a lot! lol, and we can only hope Corsair are listening..

 

it could look like this?? :D :D

 

Hi guys,

 

I recently built a new gaming system and am giving my old one to my step son. I'm a fan of RGB (don't hate me!) and currently have a k95 platinum, several RGB ML fans, a liquid cooling unit, and a few RGB strips (all made by corsair). I need to get a new power supply and would like one that can connect via usb to the computer to show how much power the various components (vid card, cpu, drives, etc.) are using - mostly just out of curiosity.

We don't hate on fans of RGB 'round these here parts. :cool:

 

I honestly wasn't going to go with a corsair power supply due to the negative stuff I've read about the link software combined with a lot of issues I've had with CUE over the years, but having recently checked out iCUE, I dig what I see so far and am thinking about getting a corsair power supply (with usb connector) along with the commander pro (since apparently - and somewhat surprisingly - iCUE can't do much with my fans aside from changing color without the commander pro, and it doesn't even recognize the liquid cooler at all).

Which issues would you be referring to? If it's issues on the forum(s), then keep in mind that very few people post to say it's all wonderful and good. The only thing that you'll see is issues that folks have.

Also, keep in mind that Corsair PSU's are consistently rated as some of the best that you can get for stability, efficiency and reliability. This includes the lines that don't support Link integration, which is optional even for those PSUs that do.

And which cooler do you have? Filling out the system specs is super-helpful; you can use any unused lines to fill in other stuff (coolers, etc) that you are running on your system.

 

So what I'm curious about is the aforementioned question: does anyone know if Corsair has any plans to release an rgb power supply anytime soon? I haven't really found any info online with respect to that, but given the general direction corsair has been going, I figure it's somewhere on their to-do list. My current/old power supply works fine, but I'll need a new one when I give my old rig to my step son and am trying to decide whether to go ahead and purchase what's available now, or give it a couple of months if Corsair has something in the works.

This has come up several times on the forum. There are those of us that have begged, pleaded and even gone on Tofu and Hummus diets for an RGB PSU. Corsair doesn't comment on unreleased products so ... who knows? Considering where their product lines have been going, it would make sense that they have one coming.

 

And more generally, for those of you who are using iCUE to manage several Corsair products (including fans, liquid coolers, power supplies, or anything else) what is your experience of it so far? I'd like to imagine that Corsair has upped their software game to match their hardware game, but I am admittedly a bit skeptical.

I've been using iCue to manage my Corsair products - and if you look at my system specs, you'll see it's a pretty long list - for about a month now. As a long-time Link user, it took a little bit to get used to as it does some things differently but it's been pretty solid, especially for beta software. It's not perfect (no software is) but if you are a fan of RGB, it's definitely a huge step forward over Link.

Thanks for the thorough response, DevBiker!

 

Regarding the issues with Link - I do take what I read on the forums with a grain of salt for the reason you mention, but the issues with it that I was referring to are a number of things I've found on reviews for various Corsair products that use Link (PSU's, fans, commander pro, etc.) on Amazon and Newegg. Even many of the reviews attached to good ratings for said products describe Link itself as being difficult or even "unbearable" to use - although admittedly not everyone had trouble with it. If you search for any of those products and then search questions and/or reviews for "link", you'll see what I'm talking about.

 

As an early adopter of Corsair's RGB keyboards (I bought one of the first k95 RGB's available (with blue switches... music to my ears, and I love the way they feel - I wish I could get them on the k95 platinum), I've personally experienced many, many issues with CUE since day one. My first impressions were that while it obviously had a lot of versatility, it was created for engineers by engineers rather than the average user, making it very clunky and difficult to accomplish even simple stuff for me at least. I was surprised that there were originally no lighting presets at all - that you had to create any lighting effects you wanted from scratch or download a profile from someone who had already made one. Given that every marketing video posted anywhere online showed the rainbow wave effect, I was surprised and dismayed to find that I couldn't simply select that as an option, and to rub salt in the wound, Corsair didn't provide any profiles online that one could download but instead relied entirely on users to do so... AND there was no way to download profiles from within CUE itself, requiring another clunky process to get them from the forums into the software.

 

I eventually figured out most of how it worked (or the parts that were important to me at least), but after that, nearly every software and/or firmware update broke my settings, requiring me to take a number of troubleshooting steps, usually involving at the very least uninstalling/reinstalling the software and rebuilding/redownloading both my action and lighting profiles from scratch, and often resetting the keyboard, all of which was very time consuming and left me never wanting to update anything, ever. Often the updates would break extremely major and basic functions of the keyboard - as in, it wouldn't type anything at all.

 

Eventually I was glad to see that Corsair added some lighting presets to CUE, and the glitches more or less settled down.

 

Then CUE 2 hit, which was an utter disaster for me at least. Aside from the minor annoyance that I could no longer remap keys and then set them to "repeat constantly while pressed" for games (I had to use the macro function instead of the "remap key" function), the software would *extremely often* get stuck in a loop with a single key repeating itself and no way to stop it. This would continue even after unplugging the keyboard altogether, so whether or not a hardware issue was the initial source of the problem, CUE 2 was responsible for carrying out the resulting mess. The only solution I found for this was force-quitting CUE 2 via the task manager, since the software itself became unresponsive, but it would inevitably happen again very quickly unless I also restarted my computer. This was a death knell to any game I was playing, and ruined the experience for the folks I'd be playing with online at the time as well, as I was essentially crippled whenever this would happen and couldn't even communicate via text chat what was going on since all they would see was something along the lines of "44444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444444..." whenever I tried to type something, and push-to-talk wouldn't work with voice chat for the same reason. My k95 had firmware 2.05 as I recall, which according to the recommendations I had read on the forums meant that CUE 2 was indeed the software I was supposed to be using, but after talking to tech support, the only solution they offered was to revert to an older software version, which did help.

 

After mentioning my experience to Corsair James, he kindly offered to replace my old k95 with the platinum, which has thankfully been working like a charm with iCUE so far. (although I do wish that it had more g keys and that I could remap keys to repeat constantly like I used to without having to use macros). I'm guessing that my issues mostly stemmed from being an early adopter and having one of the very first models that came out, but the whole experience over the last few years has left me gun-shy when it comes to Corsair software.

 

As for my cooler, I have the Hydro H115i Pro RGB (280 mm). I was admittedly a bit surprised and dismayed to find that only the cooler itself was RGB and not the fans (I misinterpreted the fine print and didn't think to search the Q&A on whether the fans were RGB). I already had three of the RGB ML fans which I like a lot on a number of levels (performance, low noise level, and they look awesome - plus, MAGNETS, B***H!!), so I went ahead and just bought two more to use instead of the ones that came with the cooler. I gotta say though that it didn't make a lot of sense to me that these ML RGB fans (or at least the RGB LL's or HD's) weren't already included with the cooler given that it was an RGB cooler.

 

And yes, I do realize how highly regarded Corsair PSU's are, and I'll likely go with one regardless of whether they release an RGB model soon. I also have my eye on the darkcore wireless charging mouse but am waiting for a mousepad that charges the mouse from anywhere instead of from just one spot, preferably while using it, a la the Logitech version - I imagine that something like this is currently in the works at Corsair (ideally an RGB version), but as you said, who knows? And as World of Warcraft is one of my favorite games, a *scimitar* with wireless charging would be that much more appealing (I currently use the Logitech G600); I don't use every single button on it, but I do use more than 9, which I believe is how many the dark core has.

 

Thanks again for the response! Also, @ Zotty: nice mockup!

iCue does recognize the H115i Pro ... that's the same cooler that I have on my primary machine.

 

I'm a recent convert to the Corsair Keyboard/Mouse (outside-the-box) pieces of the ecosystem so I cannot comment on your long travails with the CUE side of the house. For me, having one application and one set of synchronized RGB across all devices was pretty killer. I've got more stuff on the way from Newegg to round it all out. So far the experience with iCue has been pretty good ... and the integration with FarCry is pretty killer.

 

Now ... for the ML RGB fans ... those aren't directly supported in iCue yet but that's coming. That said, I do have another system with 6 ML-RGB fans. On this one, I actually have them configured as 2 HD fans ... this works quite well, in fact and I happen to like the effects better. In fact, with Link, I had them configured the same way.

DevBiker when you say iCUE recognizes that cooler, I'm guessing you mean when you have it attached to a commander pro? I don't currently have one of those but went ahead and ordered it today. I figured that the lack of the commander pro is the reason my software doesn't recognize the cooler, but perhaps something else is going on.

 

Also, when you say support for the ML RGB fans is coming in iCUE, would that also require the commander pro?

DevBiker when you say iCUE recognizes that cooler, I'm guessing you mean when you have it attached to a commander pro?

 

No dude.. just an internal or external usb header/socket

 

 

Also, when you say support for the ML RGB fans is coming in iCUE, would that also require the commander pro?

 

Or a Lighting Node Pro dude

 

Might be worth having a read of this thread, will help you visualise it all ;) http://forum.corsair.com/v3/showthread.php?t=173880

Hmm I’ll have to double-check my connections when I get home. I already have the cooler connected via usb, but it’s possible the connection is loose or something. I already have the fans connected via a lighting node pro and can control the lighting with iCUE (as mentioned in my first post), but I can’t control fan speed with it, which is one of the things I’m after.

Hmm I’ll have to double-check my connections when I get home. I already have the cooler connected via usb, but it’s possible the connection is loose or something. I already have the fans connected via a lighting node pro and can control the lighting with iCUE (as mentioned in my first post), but I can’t control fan speed with it, which is one of the things I’m after.

 

yeah would need the CoPro for iCue/Link control of fan speeds dude.

 

have a look at DevBikers cooler thread re it not appearing in link in case you have missed something.

 

http://forum.corsair.com/v3/showthread.php?t=174442

I got iCue to recognize my cooler. Thanks for the suggestions! It was indeed a problem with the USB connection. I already have the fan controller that comes with the fan multipacks but am looking forward to playing around with the commander pro, partly for the thermal sensors, partly for the USB hub, and partly (hopefully) to be able to ditch the separate LED node so as to consolidate it all into one unit.

 

I like what I’m seeing from iCUE so far and am curious to see what Corsair will do with it as time goes on.