Corsair iCUE using CPU

Hello guys. So I suspect people have posted about this before but it's a bit of a concern of mine. I currently run iCUE on my PC because as far as I can tell it's the most effective way to control the light of my RAM and H115i RGB, as well as the fan curve of the radiator fans.

Unfortunately, it's a pretty hefty process to let run in the background, consistently hogging 4-5% of my 9900k through "Corsair service" and anothe 0.1-0.5% from the iCUE process itself. Now, 5% may not seem like much but these little things add up, between the antivirus, the various chatting/voice software, the motherboard RGB controls and the mouse management meme. Thankfully these other control programs usually use well below 1% of CPU. I know it's not a huge deal but I've tested it out and it does hurt my synthetics scores so it's not entirely without consequence. I gain an easy 50 points on Cinebench by turning off iCUE which, in turn, shuts down the Corsair.service. The downside is that then, the pump RGB starts doing its own thing :P

I don't know if there's anything I can do on my end or if perhaps Corsair should put a leash on that process ^^

It is commonly acknowledged around here :)

Look at the thread with the most posts.

It can be 10% here (iCUE+Service)

Nothing I can feel while using the PC, only measure.

To me the worst is not the CPU usage, but the little bit of heat generated for no reason that keeps the coolant a couple degrees higher than what it should be.

I'm sure Corsair knows about it by now.

Are they for real? That would be great news if that's true.

They are always working on iCue and its various aspects. And yes, that includes the performance.

I seen the CPU usage change over the last few versions and it also seems to be dependent on the devices connected.

CPU usage under version 3.799 was fine until I installed a ST100 RGB. Corsair Services used ~1% and iCUE ~4.5%. After installing version 3.8.91, both came down to ~1%. And now version 3.9.93 seems to be even better.

Still an issue. A difference of 120 points here using Cinebench R20.

3900X:

With iCue and Service: Idle at 47, Score 6820

Without Service: Idle at 43, Score 7017

Without iCue and Service: Idle at 41, Score: 7117

So right now, no iCue or Service.

Yes, if you are a professional benchmark runner you shouldn’t be using any monitoring programs at all. They will all impact your score. You likely want to start shutting down your Windows background systems as well. All of them impact your score as well. Everything not related to the program you are running affects your score.

If you are looking for more meaningful information regarding this, other users with your CPU model, there are more current threads discussing the issue. A two year old thread that predates your CPU and is 20 something versions of the software earlier may not be helpful.