I started out with what I thought was a simple mission. Use Open Source software to control my fans and RGB rather than propriety and brand-specific software. It turned out to be much harder than needed mostly Corsair hardware seems to not play nicely with these tools. In the end, I’ve decided to use primarily OpenRGB to run everything (including fans). Here is what I learned along the way.

FanControl

FanControl is an awesome piece of opensource software which can control the fans in the system. The best things about fancontrol is that it is lightweight, highly configurable and relatively straightforward and visual. It does take a bit of learning to understand the “philosophy” of fancontrol. Essentially there are input numbers (normally the CPU or GPU temperature) and output which is the fan speed. I ended up using a fairly simple approach with fancontrol. My general approach was: if the CPU is hot, spin up the CPU fans, if the GPU is hot, spin up the GPU fans, for the case spin it up if either the CPU or GPU is hot. This is solution maximises cooling but is probably not the most energy efficient or sound efficient. I used a simple linear relationship which is fine but can lead to the fans “chasing” the heat or constantly reacting. A better approach would possibly be most proactive.

To get it working with the Corsair fans in my iCUE CPU Cooler I had to use this additional software: FanControl CorsairLink Unofficial Plugin. It works very well but it expects to be the only thing talking to the Corsair devices which can cause issues with iCUE or an RGB solution.

OpenRGB

OpenRGB is an incredible solution that connects to all RGB devices and can apply the same colour, effects or synchronise with an external source like audio or home assistant. To get it working with my Corsair keyboard I had to use the latest unreleased version, however this will be resolved in a month or two. I also had to run it as administrator and ensure it was reloaded after sleep. To do this I created a task that does this as so:

1. Open Event Viewer
2. Find the “Kernel-Power” event which is return from Sleep (Event ID 566)
3. Right click and select create task
4. Create a task that runs “C:\Program Files (x86)\\OpenRGB\OpenRGB.exe -profile Blue” as administrator on this event

I then used the OpenRGB Fans plugin to control the fans from this software. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to support the Corsair Fans using this method, so for now I have simply set them using iCUE.

SignalRGB

I loved SignalRGB for it’s simplicity, interface and power. Unfortunately, I found it absolute trashed performance of my PC in games. If they can fix the performance issues this is another great option for controlling RGB devices and for me it detected everything out of the box. Keep in mind SignalRGB and the CorsairLink plugin above seemed to have some issues.