How To Add RGB Lighting To Your PC Case

Love it or hate it, RGB lights have turn out to be essential aspect for a lot of the gaming setups in the present day. These lights not solely make your PC look cooler but additionally make your gaming classes more immersive and enhance the general computing expertise.

To add RGB to your PC case, first get some LED strips and a RGB controller. Then connect the strips across the edges of your PC case and join it to the controller. After that, plug its knowledge cable into the USB header on the motherboard. Now energy in your pc, and see how these lights convey life to your PC case.

While these are simply the summarized steps, let’s simplify the method additional with an in depth step-by-step information for including RGB lighting to your PC case.

Getting Things Ready

Before doing something, let me ask you what sort of RGB setup you need. Are you planning to put in just a few LED strips or a number of strips that run by way of your entire PC case?

If you might be pondering of using just one or two of them, merely examine if there may be an RGB or ARGB header on the motherboard. Below is my GIGABYTE TRX40 AORUS MASTER that comes with each headers.

Briefly talking, the 4-pin RGB header is used to energy static LED strips that devour +12V. Here, static means you cannot totally customise its lighting results.

On the opposite hand, the 3-pin ARGB header is used to energy addressable LED strips that devour +5V. The addressable LEDs enable customers to completely customise the lighting.

If you aren’t certain about these headers, I strongly advise you to examine the motherboard guide. Provided that your motherboard has considered one of them, you don’t want to make use of a separate RGB controller to configure the RGB strips.

But to be trustworthy, there are a whole lot of advantages should you go for a RGB controller.

Not solely is it useful for motherboards with out RGB headers, nevertheless it additionally presents a multi-strip connection. It extends elevated management and customization of the RGB, offering a bunch of colour profiles and funky aesthetic results.

To start with, seize the RGB strips, controller, a few extension adapters, a screwdriver, and some zip ties or cable ties. You are good to go, then.

Prepare PC Case

Once you’ve gotten gathered the required instruments and equipment, let’s put together the PC case for putting in the RGB.

1. Turn off your PC and take away the facility cable from the PSU.
2. I strongly advocate grounding your self to keep away from any harm by ESD. A best guess could be to make use of an anti-static wrist wrap or contact any metallic object that’s in touch with the bottom.
3. Now open the PC case by unscrewing the screws on the aspect panels.
4. You might also take away your GPU for some time should you assume it can intrude with the RGB set up course of.

Install RGB LED Strips

Coming to the set up part, it’s utterly your desire. You can both information the strips alongside the perimeters of the PC case or no matter you like.

Personally, I want a tidy setup. So, I solely use 4 items of LED strips and information every of them by way of the 4 edges of the case.

1. Peel off the tape on the back of the strip and gently press it to stay on the chassis. If you’ve gotten a magnetic strip, it can get connected to the case itself. Some instances even present clips to carry these strips. Check and act accordingly.
2. If you’ve gotten a number of strips, use extension adapters to attach them collectively. Since I’m using 4 strips of 30 cm size, I’ll use two extension adapters to attach every two of them. As such, I’ll solely have two strip connectors that may go into the RGB controller later.
3. While attaching two strips collectively, be certain that the arrow signal or labels on each the strips match. Connecting strips haphazardly could find yourself damaging them.
4. It’s now time to attach strips to the controller device. Here, I’ve a HUE+ controller from NZXT that has two ports for plugging the strips.
   
5. Once the strips are plugged in to the controller, connect the facility cable.
6. Connect the opposite finish of the facility cable to the Molex or SATA connector, relying on what it has.
7. Route the facility cable correctly in order that it received’t intrude with different elements.
8. Plug the USB cable into the RGB controller.
9. Then, join its different finish to a USB header on the motherboard.
   
10. Screw the controller device to a correct location inside your PC case. I like to recommend using the three.5” drive bays for mounting it.
11. In case the strip seems to be longer, you possibly can simply lower it off from the designated areas. They have a “scissors symbol” labeled to let you understand about it. If that’s not potential, take a zipper tie, bundle the additional strip and conceal it contained in the PC case in order that it received’t damage the aesthetics of the construct.
12. Re-insert the GPU you probably have eliminated it earlier.

Finalizing Installation

Yay! We have fitted the RGB to our PC case efficiently. It’s now time for testing and finalizing the set up.

Start by double-checking every little thing. See if the cables are linked to the correct ports and confirm if the cable administration is correct.

Once your entire factor is ready, flip in your PC and examine if the RGB glows appropriately. If every little thing is ok, shut down your PC, shut the aspect panels, and restart it.

If the RGB fails to mild, shut down the PC and recheck the connection. If you might be having issues, perhaps you’ve gotten some defective LEDs. Contact your vendor and ask for assist.

Customize RGB Lighting

Finally comes the customization part.

No matter whether or not you join the RGB strips to the motherboard or a devoted controller, you should use the proprietary software program from the producer to customise the lighting results on the strips.

For instance, Mystic Light software for MSI, iCUE for Corsair, RGB Fusion for Gigabyte, AURA SYNC for ASUS, RGB SYNC for ASRock, and NZXT CAM for NZXT gadgets.

Upon testing, I discovered that a few of these apps did not detect their very own RGB controller. Additionally, they didn’t let me customise all my LED strips collectively.

So, I opted for OpenRGB which labored with none points and helped me simply customise the lighting on the strips.