My build: Ryzen 7 3700X Build with Asus TUF Gaming X570-Plus
While the RGB lights in my PC build add beautiful lighting effects to the computer, there are time and situation when you don’t want those flashy RGB lights.
In my case, my PC build is used as a work machine, not a gaming machine. So I prefer my machine to perform quietly (visually) rather than showing off there all the time.
The RGB lights are shining all over the places including the case, motherboard, CPU cooling fan, RAM & case fans. I thought there would be an all-or-nothing settings at the BIOS to turn off all the lights but after digging through the BIOS, there isn’t one such setting.
Hopefully these RGB settings will be standardized and eventually be able to control all from the BIOS settings. But for now, I have to go through multiple steps to turn off RGB lights from different components one by one.
Turn off motherboard & case lights through BIOS
My motherboard is Asus TUF Gaming X570-Plus. There is a handy AURA ON/OFF switch available to turn off the lightings on both the motherboard & case (but it has no effects on fans, cooler nor RAM).
- boot into BIOS settings
- press F4
- select Stealth Mode
Different motherboard will have different settings. Consult your motherboard manual to find the corresponding settings to turn on/off RGB lightings.
Turn off AMD stock cooler RGB
AMD Ryzen 7 3700X CPU comes with a stock fan cooler called Wraith Prism. This nice stock fan is powered by Cooler Master. Cooler Master has offered a software to control the RGB lighting.
In order for the Wraith Prism software to control the cooler RGB lights, we need to use a another cable (USB cable) that comes with the cooler instead of the RGB cable.
- Power off the computer
- Remove the 4-pin RGB cable from the Wraith Prism cooler
- Use USB cable (smaller side) to connect to the Wraith Prism cooler’s 3-pin connect:
- connect the other side of the USB cable to a USB header
- Restart the computer
- Download: Wraith Prism RGB Lighting Control Software
- Install & run the software (Wraith Prism)
Under MAIN CONTROL, there are 3 tabs: RING LED, FAN LED & LOGO LED. Each has its own LIGHT ON/OFF switch.
- turn LIGHT off for each of the 3 tabs
Now the Wraith Prism cooler should be spinning diligently without showing off.
Turn off Corsair RAM RGB lights
Similarly, Corsair has a software called iCue that lets to control your Corsair RAM RGB lights.
- Download: iCue
- Install & run software (iCUE)
- click on VENGEANCE RGB PRO
- select LIGHTING EFFECTS
I have 2 memory sticks and iCUE is showing them as DIMM 1 and DIMM 2.
- click on DIMM 1 and DIMM 2
Now the memory sticks should turn dark.
Turn off case fans RGB lights
The best way is to purchase case fans that do not have RGB lights. For fancy RGB fans, you can get a RGB controller to control the lights.
My beautiful Lian Li LANCOOL 2 case comes with 3 case fans that do not have RGB lights. So that’s good to go.
The 2 extra 120mm fans I purchased come with white LED (Thermaltake Riing 12). After careful examination and googling around, apparently there is no control you can turn off the LED light.
The fan does have a separate wire pair running from the fan motor to the LED light. There is a high chance that I can turn off the LED light by cutting this wire pair to break the circuit to the LED. However, I typically don’t like to break things that is not reversible (even though I can solder it back). Plus the fact that the white LED light isn’t that bad after all, I decide to leave the white fan LED light alone.
Here’s my visually quiet 3700X build after all these tweaking:
Anonymous
30 Oct 2020Why can’t the switch on cooler be hi-lo-off. I don’t want an additional cable and I don’t want to install the software.
Youda
30 Oct 2020Oh my god! Nobody else finds anything wrong on the fact that you need to read several pages long article and install 3+ different application, just to turn OFF the lights?!?
Boris Leonov
18 Nov 2020Easier solution: cut the RGB wire on the 4 pin connector..
Dan
13 Dec 2020I agree should be a master control button to turn off everything. but it’s a nice tutorial! One missing is how to turn off led on your graphics card.
Scott
16 Dec 2020And if you’re not running Windows, you’re just stuck with the lights?
CJ Flynn
21 Dec 2020Why is it that when I lock my computer the icue controlled lights come right back on to default settings?
ZVi
19 Mar 2021Just throw a towel over the chassis 🙂
Rick Muller
9 Dec 2021To hell with installing software which by the way takes up >170MB of ram, just to keep the stupid lights off? Not only that but 820MB?
I’ll check on the motherboard if there is a setting there…Ridiculous garbage Corsair…
Anonymous
24 Jan 2022Don’t buy Corsair products then 🙄