Hacking the RGB lights on a GPU card?

So, My entire setup is almost fully controlled by corsair... Fans, input devices, mouspad, etc.... Even the Asus MB is controllable through iCue which means Coordination. Nice.

Not nice? My MSI Duke RTX2080 with it's required Mystic Light software control for it's RGB. As of now I'm seeing little info on there ever being a plugin for this in iCUE (or at least any time soon). So that leaves me contemplating alternate methods for control. One could possibly find a way to program iCue to execute profile changes in mystic light. I'm no programmer and that sounds like a hassle, even if it could be done. Given that Mystic light is a lot more limited in what can be done with it's lighting control, it makes it an even less desirable option.

Then I thought... I could just disable the cards RGB and put my own Addressable strip behind the logo. That's doable and could be done pretty easily, but that got me thinking. Seems like just about everything RGB the last year or two has been using the addressable LED's. The RGB on my card appears to be a separate lighting piece behind the logo on the heatsink... not something soldered to the PCB. I did some digging online and various teardown photos show that there is indeed a cable for it connected to a header on the PCB. Both the fan and RGB header appear to be 4 pins. Now, the photos didn't show the cables all to clearly, but it looks as though the RGB cable might only be 3 wires. This would hint that it is indeed addressable and possibly compatible with the LED Node Pro or Commander Pro via the creation of a simple adapter cable. If true, this would be even easier than replacing the light with my own!

Anyone ever done this before or at least looked into it? When I get more time tomorrow, I'm going to pop my card out and have a look. It'd complete my total RGB control of my system and eliminate one more buggy program I'd have to have installed on my PC. Not a bad trade for about 5-10 minutes of effort. :biggrin:

Thoughts?

It will be have to be hardware solution. Getting iCUE and Mystic Light to relinquish control to each other would be problematic and I am in the same boat.

There are 3rd party adapters that can connect other 5v RGB addressable connections back to Corsair lighting controllers. Take a look here, although if you are going to replace the strip inside there may be other solutions as well. I know others have done this and may have first hand knowledge to share. Unfortunately, my 2080 Ti Seahawk EK X is one-way sealed, so there is no hope for me. That card seemed like it had such expansive lighting options when I first got it. It has 12 addressable LEDs. Too bad Mystic light only makes them addressable for the breathing and double flash patterns. Not even for static lighting. Lots of regrets there.

Pulled it apart today and wouldn't you know it. The 3 pin connector was a 4 pin connector and another fan at that. Pulling it all apart showed that the logo was actually a flexible pcb with 6 smd style led's mounted in a diffuser plate with a cut out logo glued on the other side. The cable ended up being 10 or so wired hooked up to a special connector on the board. Oh well... So much for being easy. Time to put the 3d printer to work I guess. lol

I drew up a replacement diffuser and logo plate that can fit a neopixel strip (10 close spaced ones!) and am currently printing/tweaking as needed to fit. My MB came with a header cable for the 5v RGB connection and it was very easy to solder that on to the bit of strip I'll be using. If all goes well I should have everything back together with a custom logo GPU Light that's controlled via my MB (and therefore, iCue) and synced up with all my other lights. That's the plan anyway. Here's hoping! :-)