I wanted to make a post about this issue I had for the past few months since I could not find any one else having this problem on the internet. Like the title says, my RGB on my motherboard including two 4-pin rgb strips plugged into the board kept dying completely randomly. It will sometimes work for hours before failing and other times it fails within a few minutes. It started when I updated iCUE but I believe it is just a coincidence and the problem is with Armoury Crate. I use only iCUE to control RGB since almost every component in my build is Corsair and my Asus lighting works with it too.
Since iCUE integration with Asus motherboards is implemented via the in-game lighting effects option in Armoury Crate I decided to close iCUE to prevent any conflicts and start up a game with Asus lighting effects as a test. I used Dying Light 2 for the test and the lighting effects worked fine at first but after a few minutes of playing I experienced exactly the same behaviour. The RGB on the motherboard and the two strips just goes black and didn't turn on until I closed the game.
Troubleshooting I tried in attempt to fix the problem:
- Reset all lighting settings in Armoury Crate to defaults
- Turned in-game lighting effects off and back on again
- Updated Armoury Crate and all other Asus components
- Reinstalled both Armoury Crate and iCUE (just to be sure it's not iCUE)
- Updated and performed a clean installation of iCUE (again just to be sure)
I found two solutions to this issue, the first one is temporary while the last one is more of a permanent solution:
- If you go into the settings of iCUE and toggle the plugins off, wait a few seconds and turn them back on, the motherboard lighting and 4-pin strips will light back up and work again but only for a while till it dies again. (note that this only applies to iCUE versions prior to version 5. The latest iCUE no longer has this option)
- The more permanent solution is to uninstall Armoury Crate using the uninstall tool and instead of reinstalling you install the old Aura Sync Utility. It still works exactly the same way with iCUE.
Since I removed armoury crate and use standalone Aura Sync it hasn't happended again. I never had any other RGB software installed other than Armoury Crate and iCUE. I am using Windows 11 and my motherboard is an Asus ROG STRIX Z490-F. This windows install is also pretty fresh (about 6 months old). I will install Armoury Crate again when I feel like my pc needs a refresh with a clean windows install, but till then I'm sticking with the standalone Arua Sync utility.
I hope anyone finds this info useful.
