Which motherboard manufacturer for automated RGB changes?

Ginger Penguin · October 10, 2020

Hi all,

I'm choosing a motherboard for my new system and I'm thinking about the RGB-ness of it. I was looking at the Asrock B550 Steel Legend but I haven't been able to find out much about their software. I was planning mostly to have a soft silver and blue look to the system most of the time but it'd be fun to have it turn orange, say, after a certain time of day or turn red/some sort of movement when the CPU's above a certain temperature or usage threshold. I'm mainly doing video editing so it would be nice to have it do that while rendering and it would be a useful visual marker to see when it had finished.

Obviously if it's not possible or going to cost a lot more, I won't bother. I'm not going to be sacrificing anything for it but if I have a number of options around the same price, it could be a deciding factor. I have read that Asus Aurasync can do things like that but none of their motherboards are the right fit. I haven't been able to find much about MSI's software. I'd be considering the B550-A Pro which is a bit cheaper than the Steel Legend, doesn't look quite as nice and has a few other downsides but nothing I really need. I've read that there are sort of RGB aggregator software that can work with peripherals and some motherboards (I've seen MSI and Asus but no Asrock on there). Would they be able to do what I'm after?

Thanks in advance!

SupaKomputa · October 10, 2020

https://github.com/dcerisano/RGB-LED-Motherboard-Header-Driver-App

Ginger Penguin · October 10, 2020

Oh, that's cool. Could potentially with the MSI board I was looking at, yeah. Shame it hasn't been updated in a couple of years. But a few clickthroughs led me to a project called OpenRGB which looks promising. And they have the Asrock B450 Steel Legend confirmed working so probably stands to reason that it's likely to work with the B550 version. This stuff is going just a bit over my head but part of the reason for doing this build was to try and learn some new things.

SupaKomputa · October 10, 2020

Yes, RGB controller software should not be difficult to make, sooner or later someone will pop out an opensource script that are universal.

If you have some scripting knowledge, you can make the functionality that you wanted.

Another problem to tackle does the video editing software can send an external notifications when job is finished.

Ginger Penguin · October 11, 2020

13 hours ago, SupaKomputa said:

Yes, RGB controller software should not be difficult to make, sooner or later someone will pop out an opensource script that are universal.

If you have some scripting knowledge, you can make the functionality that you wanted.

Another problem to tackle does the video editing software can send an external notifications when job is finished.

True. And it seems there's an ongoing project so it's likely. That said, I really don't have any scripting knowledge apart from trying to make a rom hack when I was in my late teens. Although I did take to it fairly alright, something tells me this might be somewhat more complex. But could be a good learning exercise.