Let's get personal: How much RGB lighting is enough
If we're building PCs here, i wanna hear your opinions on (A)RGB LEDs. 5V, 12V, single color, addressable. MFing Lights.
What's your preferred amount? Just a few LED fans? Or some RGB RAM sticks? Maybe just on your CPU cooler? Or a single solitary LED strip?
Maybe you're like me. Maybe you need more. Maybe your build isn't complete unless everything is glowing and synced. LED strip, LED fans, CPU cooler, GPU, the works. Why can't a PC be functional and fun to look at?
Or maybe you want no LEDs at all. Maybe you're a Noctua fan. Maybe you cringe at the idea of PC components that light up more than absolutely necessary.
So let's hear it. How much lighting is enough? Is there such a thing as enough, or too much for you?
I think this is the correct answer. Everyone should be able to find components that fit their use case. If that means no window panel, no lights, just business? That's great.
If that means a pink, red, white, or blue case with lights like a 4th of July show? that's fine too.
It's partially because of my use case (My gaming PC occupies a very obvious position in living/hosting/social room and is also the central device that feeds the two TVs there) and partially my personality, but LED lighting is fun and i go out of my way to pick components that have it if the price hike is reasonable.
Syncing all the lights together into a pattern i choose is fun.
Any lights is too many lights, they are pointless and obnoxious IMO. I fucking hate how my current laptop has one of those stupid fucking rgb backlit keyboards which lights up to full brightness when the computer goes into standby but isn't closed.
The sooner manufacturers stop making this trash the better.
I'm glad they make LED parts for me and non LED parts for you. I'm personally very happy that so many components offer customizable lighting these days. At least for my desktop haha
Zero. It seems like the rabid focus on aesthetics has lead to unbreathable (but good looking) PC cases that make it harder to cool components and ultimately worsen performance indirectly. And I am still irritated that the RGB on my current PC cant be turned off via software or via the motherboard (yay known bugs that were never fixed!) which made it so I had to completely shut the PC off in my room in order to sleep until I found out where the manual RGB toggle was.
Zero decorative elements. Hate them. One for power and one for disk acttivity. I turn the rest off whenever I can, or if possible, physically remove them.
Though RGB on the keyboard is enabled during Christmas, when I string the lights up on the Christmas tree.
That's fascinating. I figured Lemmy users would basically self select as the exact kind of people who dislike decorative elements and these comments suggest i was mostly right.
Why is keyboard RGB only ok during Christmas?
I'm not here to convince anyone how cool LEDs are but i do like hearing other opinions.
So I've got 7 rgb fans with two zones each, ram with 8 spots on each, four led strips hidden around the case for ambience,an air with a light cap, a keyboard and a mouse. They're all synced and great. My latest GPU has a light strip on it, and that was honestly too much. It's too many things for me to care about, I'm fine running the program for the ram, and the program for everything else, but I can't be bothered to have another thing to control lights on the GPU and motherboard, so I just turn them off.
If anyone knows a complete unifying program for all lights that's as customizable as corsairs software, I'll turn them back on. CAM is actually a pretty big program that I'm sure could be done better, but I haven't found a replacement yet.
While it can be a little flaky depending upon your individual setup, OpenRGB has been great for my rig. I have a simple mobo/RAM/GPU lighting using 3 different bits of individual software, and OpenRGB is very capable at taking their place. Presets make it even easier to set up your favorite styles. Highly recommend. Oh, and it's free.
I use signalrgb.com for this exact purpose. You add your devices to a single "canvas" and pick a pattern to play across that canvas and all your parts light up to match that pattern. Libes, swirls, waves, falling leaves, thunder, fire, etc.
It's amazing and i love it and it has great compatibility
Some people have the need to spy/ stan on what their computer's internals is doing all the time. and I do get how fun that could be. The nsa/ kgb/ mi6/ ccp does that all the time. So why not lights? Interrogation lights sounds cool too.
but if the pc case isn't for that kind of thing, maybe no lights or the minimum you get from any discounted hardware is reasonable enough.
I only have it on my keyboard. I don't need it in the PC itself, and Id rather have it somewhere a bit more visible, as I don't put the unit on top of my desk, but in the tower cubby of my desk.
My aio pump was the first component I ever bought that had ARGB, before that it was just a single blue light in my case to let me know my pc was on.
Now I have my gpu vertically mounted with an aio on it, an ARGB gpu brace and two argb led strips I stuck to my desk (so outside the case). I mostly just keep them on orange. I have no need for them to blink or change colour, even though it could be nice to have them indicate when my cpu overheats.