ASRock enables Windows 11 native RGB controls on Intel and AMD motherboards — the beta feature is designed to eliminate confusing tangle of proprietary RGB software

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Microsoft Intends to make one open-source RGB standard to rule them all!

ASRock Motherboards Compatible with Microsoft Dynamic Lighting on Windows 11 23H2
(Image credit: ASRock)

ASRock has issued a beta firmware compatible with its AMD and Intel motherboards to support the Microsoft Dynamic Lighting standard in Windows 11. Support at this time is limited to "most" Intel 600/ 700 series and AMD B550/X570, A620/B650 and X670 motherboards.

With the beta firmware, together with Microsoft's integration (also in beta) in the latest Windows 11 23H2 builds, users can sync RGB lighting and effects on motherboards, graphics cards, gaming keyboards, mice, headphones, and microphones under one native ecosystem. 

(Image credit: ASRock)

Microsoft's idea is to bring order to the chaos by tying all RGB and lighting devices compatible with the open HID LampArray standard to its ecosystem. This will be appreciated by many who have RGB setups controlled by resource-hungry and confusing OEM utilities. Microsoft Dynamic Lighting is open source and the company is working with several OEM and ODM partners. Since many Tier 1 manufacturers have a plethora of RGB hardware, devices, and peripherals, this seems like a good way to simplify setup and controls for enthusiasts. 

While Microsoft Dynamic Lighting may not be enough to make Windows 10 users shift to Windows 11, Microsoft is at least working diligently on the operating system to make it more appealing by incentivizing existing users.

However, it will be interesting to see how many other OEMs will jump onboard and how long it will take for them to roll out initial support to customers.

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Roshan Ashraf Shaikh
Roshan Ashraf Shaikh
Contributing Writer

Roshan Ashraf Shaikh has been in the Indian PC hardware community since the early 2000s and has been building PCs, contributing to many Indian tech forums, & blogs. He operated Hardware BBQ for 11 years and wrote news for eTeknix & TweakTown before joining Tom's Hardware team. Besides tech, he is interested in fighting games, movies, anime, and mechanical watches.

6 Comments Comment from the forums
  • blacknemesist
    Great, hopefully that will remove the need to install bundles upon bundles of bloatware you to disable RBG from components.
    Reply
  • emike09
    Now we just other motherboard and GPU providers to hop on board, I love this feature and tired of Asus Aurora, Corsair iCUE and MSI Lighting, etc taking up valuable resources. Some of them are terrible offenders. All in all, I have about 5-10% of my CPU resources wasted on these buggy, bloated programs.
    My only concern is the footprint, long-term support, and resources that Windows will dedicate to their own solution.
    Reply
  • chemistu
    I was almost ... excited? about this until I searched the Asrock website and couldn't find the update anywhere. Anyone else have any more luck?

    Not that I really need the update, there are only three RGB LED's stuck in the RGB header in the whole build, but everyone else was getting RGB'd and I felt left out. Plus it does give a nice green glow through the fan vent when the room is dark.

    Now for a simple way to control the razer huntsman keyboard. The software bloat there is beyond belief. 999 Mb (0.97 GB) just to turn a few lights on and off. Insane. That is insane right? it's not just me??
    Reply
  • MiniITXEconomy
    Thank God, because I've been having a hell of a time trying to get ASRock's RGB software to play nice with Windows 11. Every time I fire it up, I gotta click through multiple error messages just to get the dang software to open! I'd be happy to be done with it.
    Reply
  • MiniITXEconomy
    chemistu said:
    I was almost ... excited? about this until I searched the Asrock website and couldn't find the update anywhere. Anyone else have any more luck?

    Not that I really need the update, there are only three RGB LED's stuck in the RGB header in the whole build, but everyone else was getting RGB'd and I felt left out. Plus it does give a nice green glow through the fan vent when the room is dark.

    Now for a simple way to control the razer huntsman keyboard. The software bloat there is beyond belief. 999 Mb (0.97 GB) just to turn a few lights on and off. Insane. That is insane right? it's not just me??

    I see it available for download on newer motherboards but not for the older b550/x570 models. I guess we gotta wait our turn, Chemistu.
    Reply
  • d0x360
    emike09 said:
    Now we just other motherboard and GPU providers to hop on board, I love this feature and tired of Asus Aurora, Corsair iCUE and MSI Lighting, etc taking up valuable resources. Some of them are terrible offenders. All in all, I have about 5-10% of my CPU resources wasted on these buggy, bloated programs.
    My only concern is the footprint, long-term support, and resources that Windows will dedicate to their own solution.

    Armoury crate is basically malware imo. One of their forum mods was so sick of people trying to uninstall it and failing because if there was any remnant it would just come back so he made a custom uninstaller that is now for download from Asus lol.

    It's the worst software of the bunch at what it does, the most ridiculous to uninstall and works the least well at every single intended purpose.

    My latest build is about a month old and already armoury crate is broken and can't self update or even be manually updated from inside armoury crate. I need to install my lian li fan controller so I can just use lconnect.
    Reply