Asus I am opening up a new VR gaming arcade and have 24 machines and have planned to have each with an Asus motherboards and GPUs. I was planning to get 24 RGB lighting kits for the lighting solutions but after dealing with Aura in my own system for the couple of years and seeing how the software has gotten more and more unreliable, I can't justify the cost or take the chance that I will end up going through the nightmare I have in the last two months.
About 2 months ago Aura stopped working on my Asus Rampage 6 system. Over the last two months I have from time to time looked up a variety of answers and possible solutions and never could get the program to even load. When I said I tried everything, I truly believe I tried everything, even went as far as to reformat and do a full clean install. That worked until Windows updated for the first time on its own, after that...nothing. I have seen all the errors, the big red, "You don't have permissions", to "Aura has stopped working" to absolutely nothing happens.
Welp today I spent 7 hours in one last effort to see if I could get it working without needing to reinstall. I loaded up Revo and CCleaner. I uninstalled EVERYTHING Asus, including Live Dash, Armory and Suite3. I deleted it all and had not anything on my computer or in my registry that said anything Asus or Aura or ROG, ect. Still couldn't get a current version working. I was able to get a few of the older versions to load up. Boy did they load up fast! Lights and everything, only problem is if you wanted anything other than the default setting you were outta luck, but at least they worked. I poured through over 200+ pages on these forums to learn all the tricks others did to get it to work. Made sure all my programs and BIOS were updated, uninstalled any other program that might conflict, nothing seemed to work. Aura worked only with the older versions.
Finally approaching the 7th hour tried a new combination by going from an older version, changing my BIOS so I got the LED Firmware updating message, uninstalling that version, installing the newest, updating my BIOS to current to get the LED Firmware updating message again and Boom! It worked! I thought I had conquered it and I was happy. I even restarted multiple times to make sure I wasn't dreaming. Sure it took 20-30 seconds for Aura to load up but it did!
Well that was 4 hours ago and now I went to Aura to turn off the lights for bed and sure enough, nothing. Back to square one and having this software do the exact same thing it has pretty much always done. A whole day wasted. In the end I had to uninstall and reinstall one of the previous versions just to turn off the lights.
The worst part is, I only want Aura for the motherboard lighting, case lighting and my 4 RGB strips. I use my mouse wirelessly so need to sync up. I don't have any RAM or GPU to light up. All I wanted was a little lighting for my case and Asus can't even give me that. I fully understand the need to continuously update Aura to keep up with all the RGB peripherals that have come to market but in doing so and trying to be one software that can do everything, it ends up not being able to do the one thing it was originally meant for, controlling the lights on the motherboard and a single RGB header. I have no idea why Asus can't go back to one of the earlier vanilla versions, lets call it Aura 1.5 and make it where it only does motherboards and onboard RGB headers. You get nothing else. If you want RAM, GPU, Fans and more you gotta install the 2.0 version. When Aura first came out it was simple and it worked.
Anyway I'm done. I shouldn't have to go through 24 steps of uninstalling all the separate services Asus Provides for 7 different manufacturers, uninstall the previous versions, run Revo and CCleaner, check for BIOS updates, run the Aura cleaner and sacrifice a chicken before I reinstall the next updated version and have it work for 4 hours. I'll keep the LED strips and the motherboard off unless I feel I need to see unicorn puke rainbow flashing and then I might turn it on long enough to realize why I have it turned off. The software is simply too unreliable for me to take that financial chance and certainly do not want to have to go through what I went through today 24 more times.
My purchases for these machines will be happening in the next month and I have to make some decisions. I have used Asus for 20 years and for the most part I am happy with most of the products on a personal level but now I'm dealing with a business. We want the bling and the aesthetic of glorious RGB to help enhance our atmosphere and I am going to look at other motherboard/GPU/Lighting solutions now to see if they can better serve our needs. I still may go with Asus for the motherboards and GPUs but find another lighting solution that doesn't include using any headers on the motherboard. I really would like an all in one, synced solution but I cannot trust Aura to do this anymore. I'm done trying to make it work.
Panteks Enthoo Elite / Asus x299 Rampage VI Extreme / Intel I9-7900X / Corsair Dominator RGB 3200MHz
MSI GTX 1080 TI / 2x Intel 900p / Samsung 970 Pro 512GB
Samsung 850 PRO 512GB / Western Digital Gold 8TB HD
Corsair AX 1200i / Corsair Platinum K95 / Asus Chakram
Acer XB321HK 4k, IPS, G-sync Monitor / Water Cooled / Asus G571JT Laptop
