Sync RGB Lighting Across Your SteelSeries Keyboard And MSI Motherboard

Increasingly, we’re seeing a trend of RGB lighting being synced across devices. Usually, you see that among a company’s own batch of products, but MSI got together with SteelSeries to implement the latter’s peripherals lighting software with the former’s motherboard.

For now, the synchronization is limited to the MSI Z270 Gaming Pro Carbon, but one imagines that it could work in the future for any MSI motherboard that has RGB lighting.

Simply put, SteelSeries, like many peripherals makers, has its own software application that lets you configure RGB lighting--colors, effects, and so on--as well as things like macros and key/button bindings. SteelSeries’ version is called SteelSeries Engine3 (SSE3). MSI is just allowing SSE3 to control the lighting on the Z270 Gaming Pro Carbon, and then you can sync the lighting on your SteelSeries peripherals with that motherboard.

The two main lighting features of SSE3 are PrismSync and GameSense. PrismSync controls all the lighting effects, and GameSense takes that a step further by using events in the game you’re playing to set off various lighting effects. For example, the lights on the keyboard or mouse (and/or, in this case, your motherboard) could show you your health, or remaining ammo, or--you get the idea.

SSE3 is supported on several SteelSeries peripherals, including the Rival 700 mouse and Apex M800 keyboard.

If you don’t have (or don’t want to have) SteelSeries peripherals but rock a Z270 Gaming Pro Carbon, you can still control the motherboard’s lighting with MSI’s own tools--Mystic Light Sync or the MSI Gaming App.

RGB lighting feels like an organic being that keeps evolving. First, it was on some keyboards and mice. Then it was on a lot of keyboards and mice. And headsets! Then the configuration software began to get more sophisticated. The next step in the evolution was synchronizing the lighting across multiple devices in a company’s product stack using proprietary software. And then came the RGB motherboards and cupholders!

We suppose it was inevitable, but with this MSI/SteelSeries collaboration, now RGB lighting can be synced across products from multiple manufacturers.