A PC gamer I know once said this about RGB lighting: “Once you’re in, you never get out,” as if going down that path initiates you into a mysterious, inescapable cult.
That might be a tad of an overstatement but having been fully initiated into RGB when I built a gaming rig recently, I can now fully relate.
Yep, the candid truth about RGB lighting and me, is that I have a love / hate relationship with it. Yes, it can be the best thing ever and add a much-appreciated extra layer of spice to my gaming sessions in games like CyberPunk 2077 and Oblivion Remastered.
But on the flipside, it can also make me want to throw rotten turnips at my PC case.
After building my rig, the joys of the RGB were at first very obvious. My intention for it wasn’t so much to dance Scottish jigs in the rainbow-colored glow of my dimly lit room, as it was to revel in the highly practical oranges and muted reds; to use it as a kind of ambient night light to help me find my coffee mug while gaming.
I also really liked the idea of having a showpiece to impress my visiting friends — and it did those two things remarkably well.
“Oh, that old thing,” I’d say nonchalantly, as friends would gawk at my gleaming fluorescent RTX 4070 through my case’s glass panel. But inside I was as proud as punch… My rig was truly impressive, a sight to behold, and just what I’d always wanted (or at least what I’d been told by marketers that I wanted).
But that was at the beginning. Things quickly took a turn for the worse when I realized I’d created a clown computer, one whose varying RGB parts were made up of different brands controlled by different software programs that gave me little to no ability to synchronize the colors and effects between them. My graphics card, PSU, and RGB cabling just wouldn’t play ball together and that was not cool.
The settings on my RGB keyboard too should have been easy to change and keep that way but they kept changing back to the default “ebb and flow” effect every time I rebooted. Suffice it to say, there’s only a certain amount of red light flashing off my display that I can take before I start seeing red in a figurative sense.
Next came the faulty bits that started to appear in the LED lighting strips. I lost bulbs across the top length of my case, an obvious eyesore. The colors in another strip were problematic too, never really matching the colors I’d selected in my companion app, or that I was getting in other strips.
It can be time consuming and costly managing a gaming PC’s RGB.
What’s more, I found to my dismay that the strips inside my rig were meddling with my PC’s performance, taking up critical cable routes and causing necessary cables to restrict airflow. I figured it was one of the reasons why I was getting hotter-than-expected GPU temperatures.
That’s when I really sat up and started to take notice. Having dodgy aesthetics is one thing, but no way was I going to sit back and let my RGB jeopardize my FPS — no siree!
It was obvious I’d made a mistake. Like a bower bird mesmerized by flashy bottle caps instead of catching its dinner, I’d gone for superficial looks instead of a low-maintenance setup. So, now I plan to fix it.
The problem, though, is that the RGB is everywhere. It’s threaded through my PC like a thorny infestation of blackberry hedge. I estimate I’ll have to spend $700 to replace all the parts for more minimalist alternatives that I don’t have to continually maintain.
So, for now I live with my rig as it is, faulty RGB and all, and with the ever-present reminder of the work and cost that will inevitably need to be done to right the wrongs I created.
In my next gaming rig, though, even the case will be RGB-free. I’m going to go for muted industrial blacks, browns, and silvers in metal or wood — heck even rope, but with no RGB! I’m just not drinking that Kool-Aid anymore.