Unable to control lighting on RAM in third and fourth slots

I just got some Vengeance RGB Pro (CMW16GX4M2C3200C16) to go in my system (7700k, Asus Strix Z270F, already has 16GB of Vengeance LED (CMU16GX4M2C3200C16R)), with the RAM running on their XMP profile. I don't know if this was a problem before, never really tried changing the lighting on the regular LED RAM because there's not much to change, but in iCUE when I change the lighting effects on either the RGB Pro in the third slot or the LED in the fourth slot, the RAM's lighting doesn't update, it just stays on what it was. The RAM is recognised and seems to work fine, I just can't control the lighting.

Edit: For what it's worth, I'm getting separate temperature readings from each module in iCUE, so it seems to be able to read them fine. And the frequency and timing information seems right.

I'm pretty certain it's not the RAM, since when I swapped each pair of sticks the ones in the first two slots (the ones closest to the CPU) the RAM in the first two slots worked fine for setting the lighting and the second two continued to not change.

I also tried swapping the RGB and LED sets around so the RGB RAM was in the second and fourth slots and the LED RAM was in the first and third and nothing changed.

I tried taking out the old LED RAM leaving just the RGB Pro and again I could change the first one but not the second.

I also tried putting the RGB I the first two slots and the LED in the third and fourth, but iCUE didn't seem to recognise that and thought they were still in the first and third.

As well as all that I tried updating any software I thought might be involved; updated to the newest version of iCUE and used that to update the RAM's firmware, and downloaded the latest version of the BIOS (1301) and all the latest drivers, and trawled through the BIOS searching for anything that might be relevant (turned on SPD write because I saw that in a couple of threads here but other than that couldn't see anything specific to the second two slots that was different to the third).

Probably not a problem with the RAM: for the past few hours (since I updated a bunch of things) Windows has been BSODing a lot. I was initially afraid I might have done something to the RAM in all the moving around and firmware updating, but I ran MemTest86 and it passed without errors, so it's probably a driver thing. Suggestions welcome, but it's probably not a Corsair problem, so not necessarily your job.

So that's my situation. I'm more than willing for someone to point out I missed something obvious (the best kind of solution), but in either that or a long drawn out process, can anyone help me?

The lighting issue is going to be due to the mixing and matching of RAM. In general, it's not recommended to do that and not always supported or supportable. DDR4 seems to be even more sensitive to mixing and matching than previous iterations of DDR. Yes - you may get it to work - but it's a crap shoot.

One thing that might help - and I've no idea if this will or not - is to make sure that full software control for the RAM is disabled. You can do that in the settings for the Vengeance RGB Pro -uncheck the box for "Enable full software control".

Sacrifice a cow to Cthulhu, dance around a fire while praying that Corsair can solve it, then give support a call since you already did just about everything right. Was leaning towards the FW being the issue but you said you already updated soooo....

Us cows do things a bit differently, but I'll go sacrifice a human to Cowthulhu. I hope their email support works instead of phone support because the only phone number I could find for outside the US (Australian here) seems to be for their PCs.

The lighting issue is going to be due to the mixing and matching of RAM. In general, it's not recommended to do that and not always supported or supportable. DDR4 seems to be even more sensitive to mixing and matching than previous iterations of DDR. Yes - you may get it to work - but it's a crap shoot.

One thing that might help - and I've no idea if this will or not - is to make sure that full software control for the RAM is disabled. You can do that in the settings for the Vengeance RGB Pro -uncheck the box for "Enable full software control".

As I said I tried running with just the new RGB RAM and it didn't make any difference. (And when it comes to mixing and matching, that's why I got RAM that ran at the same frequency and timings as what I already had, though that doesn't necessarily affect the lighting.)

Full software control seemed to be disabled by default and I'm not actually sure I got around to trying with it on - I did just then and the first time I tried it, it didn't seem to make a difference, the RAM stick in the second slot (the motherboard manual recommends using the second and fourth slots if you have two sticks of RAM) was controllable and the one in the fourth slot wasn't.

But in further "what the hell", when I turned software control back off, the lights for the stick in the fourth slot turned off, but playing with the lighting settings, the second slot's lights turned on/off fine, so when slot 2 was on, it was the only one lit up regardless of whether slot 4 was set to on. If slot 4 was on but slot 2 was off, neither of them lit up. But if the lighting on both of them was turned off in iCUE, the lights on the RAM on slot 4 came on, with what I'm guessing was supposed to be one of the LEDs but it was on all of them (for example in rainbow wave down, it just went through a gradient of colours, in marquee it was just flashing the marquee colour). I rebooted after that and haven't been able to replicate that, if I turn software control on then back off the stick in slot 4 (or 3 now, I put the older RAM back in slots 2 and 4 and the RGB is in slots 1 and 3 now) remains off and the only way to get it to turn back on is to turn the computer fully off then back on again (reboot doesn't work, I'm guessing because the RAM doesn't actually power down).

Touche on the sacrifice part :)

Have you tried just one stick at a time out of curiosity? And if so do you get the same results? One other thing you could try, although I don't see much changing is to force the FW update again. For whatever reason sometimes it doesn't take fully. Also are you monkeying with the DRAM voltages? And if so what are they at?

Also could you please update your system specs under profile so we can get a better idea of what hardware you have please?

Us cows do things a bit differently, but I'll go sacrifice a human to Cowthulhu. I hope their email support works instead of phone support because the only phone number I could find for outside the US (Australian here) seems to be for their PCs.

 

 

As I said I tried running with just the new RGB RAM and it didn't make any difference. (And when it comes to mixing and matching, that's why I got RAM that ran at the same frequency and timings as what I already had, though that doesn't necessarily affect the lighting.)

 

Full software control seemed to be disabled by default and I'm not actually sure I got around to trying with it on - I did just then and the first time I tried it, it didn't seem to make a difference, the RAM stick in the second slot (the motherboard manual recommends using the second and fourth slots if you have two sticks of RAM) was controllable and the one in the fourth slot wasn't.

But in further "what the hell", when I turned software control back off, the lights for the stick in the fourth slot turned off, but playing with the lighting settings, the second slot's lights turned on/off fine, so when slot 2 was on, it was the only one lit up regardless of whether slot 4 was set to on. If slot 4 was on but slot 2 was off, neither of them lit up. But if the lighting on both of them was turned off in iCUE, the lights on the RAM on slot 4 came on, with what I'm guessing was supposed to be one of the LEDs but it was on all of them (for example in rainbow wave down, it just went through a gradient of colours, in marquee it was just flashing the marquee colour). I rebooted after that and haven't been able to replicate that, if I turn software control on then back off the stick in slot 4 (or 3 now, I put the older RAM back in slots 2 and 4 and the RGB is in slots 1 and 3 now) remains off and the only way to get it to turn back on is to turn the computer fully off then back on again (reboot doesn't work, I'm guessing because the RAM doesn't actually power down).

Sooo ... when trying to run with just the Vengeance PRO RGB, it's possible that iCUE is still confused because the old RAM would still be in the profile.

Try this:

Shut down iCUE and the Corsair Service.

Clear out everything in %APPDATA%\Corsair\CUE. (Maybe back it up first.) These are your profiles and configuration - we're clearing it out.

IF you have all four sticks in, shut down, power off and remove the RAM. IF you only have the Vengeance Pro RGB in, no need to reboot (but it won't hurt) ... go ahead and restart the Corsair Service and then iCUE. This will reinitialize the profiles.

The RAM should actually light up in rainbow when first installed and before the software touches it, IIRC. You never did mention what the behavior was when you first booted after installing the RAM.

As for "same timings and everything" ... it doesn't always work. The recommendation is to get matched sets and, with DDR4, they seem to really mean it. I know - I ignored all of that for a long time too and never had an issue. But I have had issues with it and DDR4. But, so far at least, it seems to be working for you except for the lighting. Let's see if the re initialization fixes that.

Have you tried just one stick at a time out of curiosity? And if so do you get the same results? One other thing you could try, although I don't see much changing is to force the FW update again. For whatever reason sometimes it doesn't take fully. Also are you monkeying with the DRAM voltages? And if so what are they at?

I'd already tried forcing the firmware update again, didn't change anything. Haven't been monkeying with the voltages, so they should be running at whatever the XMP profile in the memory is (which I think is 1.35v).

As for trying one stick at a time, that's where things get... interesting:

Test one: One stick RGB in slot 3, all other slots empty

Results: Lighting is fully controllable.

Test two: Two sticks RGB in slots 3 and 4, first two slots empty

Results: Lighting still fully controllable.

Test three: Red LEDs in slots 1 and 2, RGBs in slots 3 and 4

Results: About what I'd expect: the red LED RAM lighting settings work fine, but the RGB seems to not be responding at all

Test four: RGBs in slots 1 and 2, red LEDs in slots 3 and 4

Results: RGBs are completely controllable. But I can change the lighting on the red LED ones, but sometimes I have to try turning the lighting off and on again a few times to actually get it to update. But they're working at least a bit, what the hell?

Not sure if anyone can figure out any rhyme or reason from those. For what it's worth, while what I currently have is a decent compromise (the RGB RAM in slots 1 and 2 and the lighting controls work, the lighting controls on the red LED RAM sort of work but there's not that much to do with them so it's not a huge problem) I think they'd look better if I alternated them (so RGB slots and 3, red LEDs 2 and 4) and I didn't pay extra for the pretty RAM to have to compromise.

Sooo ... when trying to run with just the Vengeance PRO RGB, it's possible that iCUE is still confused because the old RAM would still be in the profile.

 

Try this:

Shut down iCUE and the Corsair Service.

 

Clear out everything in %APPDATA%\Corsair\CUE. (Maybe back it up first.) These are your profiles and configuration - we're clearing it out.

IF you have all four sticks in, shut down, power off and remove the RAM. IF you only have the Vengeance Pro RGB in, no need to reboot (but it won't hurt) ... go ahead and restart the Corsair Service and then iCUE. This will reinitialize the profiles.

 

The RAM should actually light up in rainbow when first installed and before the software touches it, IIRC. You never did mention what the behavior was when you first booted after installing the RAM.

The behaviour when I first booted after installing it was a downward rainbow wave... it makes for a very good first impression.

Okay so I closed iCUE and the service, moved the CUE data folder somewhere else, turned off the computer and swapped the sticks around to my preferred layout (RGB slots 1 and 3, red LEDs slots 2 and 4). I know you said to only leave the RGB in, but... I'll be perfectly honest, I forgot that bit between reading it and opening up my case.

Anyway, booted and had mostly the same problems: the RGB in slot 1 was fine, could control it completely, the RGB in slot 3 wouldn't respond to any changes. I tried switching to full software control, that just made the lights on slot 3 turn off and they wouldn't turn back on after turning software control off (I've seen this before in my experiments, it gets fixed when you turn it off then on again). The red LED ones were behaving a bit funny too - switching the one in slot 2 on and off worked fine, but turning off the one in slot 4 turned off both of them, regardless of what the one in slot 2 was set to. Turned the PC off and back on again (so the lights on slot 3 would turn back on) and tried it a bit more, still nothing (I figured if the red LED RAM in slots 3/4 would take a few tries to get them to change their lighting, it might work for an RGB stick in slot 3... it didn't).