Corsair iCUE is the latest software from Corsair that puts your compatible products at your command. It’s the place to synchronize lighting effects across keyboards, mice, and more; program complex macros; and even control your rig’s power supply or AIO cooler.
It’s also useful for system monitoring and provides a quick overview of clock speeds, RAM timings, temperatures, and fan speed. It even includes an audio visualizer and regularly updates the firmware of your devices.
What is Corsair iCUE?
iCUE is Corsair’s software platform that allows you to customize, synchronize, and monitor all your Corsair devices from one place. It is compatible with a range of internal components and external peripherals. It runs on Windows and Mac and won’t eat up too much of your system resources.
You can program a wide variety of advanced actions within iCUE to control various features on your gaming gear, such as macros, text, keyboard shortcuts, DPI changes, timers, and media controls. These can be inserted into keys using the Assignments tab to simplify complex tasks or allow for quicker access to functions.
If you’re looking to make your rig stand out from the crowd, iCUE offers a number of pre-programmed effects that you can apply with a single click. These include the ‘Rain’ effect that will see droplets of color wash over your RGB keyboard or the ‘Rainbow Wave’ that will illuminate your RAM DIMMs in a sequence. These can be further tweaked to adjust the color, animation speed, and other settings. You can also use iCUE to monitor and adjust the functions of your Corsair hardware, such as viewing graphs for CPU and GPU temperatures or tweaking an all-in-one cooler’s pump speed.
Features of Corsair:
Corsair iCUE is a powerful, intuitive application for customizing and synchronizing all your compatible hardware. Whether you’re using their top-of-the-line mechanical keyboards, gaming headsets, or high-speed memory, you can customize lighting effects, program complex macros, and monitor all your components from one central dashboard.
Not only can you control all your Corsair iCUE devices with the software, but you can also link them together to create dynamic lighting effects and color schemes. Create a profile that displays your health in your keyboard’s lighting, or have all your devices flash at you when you get shot in a game – the possibilities are endless.
The same functionality extends to other Corsair products, including their smart power supplies and all-in-one CPU coolers. You can even set up fan curves and pump speeds on these systems, all while monitoring temperature, power draw, and noise levels.
Other features:
The iCUE software allows users to customize their keyboard’s buttons to match in-game controls. This is done by selecting the device and clicking KEY ASSIGNMENTS. From here, you can click the remap key action to assign any keyboard button to any other function. The iCUE software also features an assignment library, which allows users to duplicate functions across keys, devices, and profiles.
Corsair iCUE is compatible with most PC gaming mice and keyboards, as well as other peripherals. Its intuitive interface makes it easy to synchronize RGB lighting effects, create macros, and monitor system performance from one central location.
iCUE can also connect to games to automatically change lighting effects according to your in-game actions. For example, iCUE can flash your device’s RGB bright red when you take damage in Far Cry 6, or glow a smoldering orange as you fire your flamethrower.
iCUE can be enabled to launch at system startup and run minimized in the background, so custom profiles, lighting effects, and other settings are ready to go from the start of play. It also uses very few system resources, so it won’t impact gaming performance.
What are the pros and cons of Corsair’s iCUE?
The iCUE software provides a huge level of control over your Corsair hardware. With it you can synchronize RGB lighting effects across all your compatible devices, create themed animations and macros on Corsair gaming keyboards, reprogram keys, link profiles to games and applications, and much more. However, the power of CUE comes at a cost, as it uses up your system resources.
The best way to understand how powerful CUE is is by looking at the features available on their flagship keyboard, the K70 RGB Pro. With the software installed, you can activate an 8,000Hz polling rate which will reduce the number of keystrokes it takes to send commands to your PC, therefore reducing potential lag and improving performance.
You can also use the software to bind RGB effects to keystrokes or mouse clicks, and you can even use the software to connect your Corsair gear with their ecosystem of iCUE LINK products (like a motherboard or case) and control them all from one place. However, it’s worth remembering that not all iCUE-enabled devices are connected to iCUE LINK.
iCUE is one of the most comprehensive software applications for managing Corsair devices, with a vast range of customization options available through its exhaustive yet accessible interface. Its most popular features include dynamic lighting effects, macro programming, performance optimization, and profile synchronization.
With iCUE, you can easily control your gaming mouse, keyboard, and other peripherals. It also supports the synchronization of RGB lighting across multiple compatible devices for an impressively coordinated setup. Its simple-to-use design makes it easy to manage even for novices.
Corsair iCUE also offers the ability to remap keys and create powerful actions for your keyboard, allowing you to take control of the most important functions on your keyboard. This includes macros, re-mappable key assignments, timer countdowns, and DPI adjustments.
Conclusion:
Corsair iCUE can be downloaded from their website, and once installed it will automatically download the required modules for your device. Once the installer has finished downloading, simply follow the on-screen prompts to configure your storage location, language, and shortcuts. Once complete, reboot your PC to enable iCUE. You can then use it to synchronize your RGB devices and create a custom lighting effect for your desktop.