How to control RGB on RAM sticks, motherboards, coolers, graphics cards programmatically with OpenRGB

When I was building my gaming PC a few years ago, I bought a second-hand pair of RAM sticks with RGB lights. It was entertaining to see them glowing and changing colors. I did not bother myself to control them.

Some time later, I got sick of gaming and made a decision to rebuild it into a self-hosting server. The PC moved from my table to an under-TV shelf in the living room. And here, glowing lights became distracting during watching TV or when we have guests sleeping in the living room. Therefore, I started searching for ways to control/disable RGB lights.

After some search, I encountered OpenRGB. It's open-source RGB control software that is independent from manufacturer software. It supports color syncing across several devices and has a community-managed effects library. It has a long list of more than 2,500 supported devices and, hopefully for me, my Corsair Vengeance was there!

What a great piece of software, right?

It's a shame that I needed this software only to disable RGB.

Installing OpenRGB

OpenRGB runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows. You can download the package for your operating system from the releases page.

On my Debian-based server, I downloaded the .deb package and installed it with:

sudo apt install ./OpenRGB-<version>-x86_64.deb

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The package includes the required udev rules. If you use an AppImage, Flatpak, or a build from source, install the udev rules too. Without them, OpenRGB may not be able to access the RGB hardware without running as root.

Before creating the service, check that OpenRGB can detect your devices:

sudo openrgb --list-devices

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Make a note of the device numbers you want to control. Mine were 0 and 1.

Configuring

I needed the RGB to turn off every time the system starts. So I ended up with the following systemd service.

First, test the command manually. 000000 is black, which turns the LEDs off. The direct mode is supported by my devices; use the output of --list-devices to check which modes yours support.

sudo openrgb -d 0 -c 000000 -m direct -d 1 -c 000000 -m direct

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When that worked, I created the service below.

/etc/systemd/system/openrgb.service:

[Unit]
Description=OpenRGB control

[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/usr/bin/openrgb -d 0 -c 000000 -m direct -d 1 -c 000000 -m direct
User=root
Group=i2c

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

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systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl enable openrgb
systemctl start openrgb

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Now the RAM lights turn off automatically on every boot. No proprietary RGB application, no running desktop session, and no bright lights in the living room.

Final thoughts

If you have devices with RGB lights, check whether they are supported by OpenRGB. You might find a more creative use for it than I did and build some nice RGB animations.