Board Software

The software hasn't changed much recently with the usual Armoury Crate package requiring you to download packages that include various groups of features. Assistant and Playground are typically the ones you want to have, with the former giving you fan control through Fan Xpert and the latter Aura Sync, which is RGB lighting control. Unfortunately, these packages also install a bunch of other things and despite downloading most items direct from ASUS servers, there's still an update process you'll need to go through to get everything working. In short, it's a bit bloated and time-consuming.

Once installed, though, the fan control is the best out there with nearly all the features of the EFI minus the ability to swap between PWM and voltage modes for fan control, but you get the ability to change temperature inputs as well as spin-up and spin-down times. The LCD customization offers a range of animated backgrounds as well as various inputs for hardware monitoring data to be overlaid on top of those. RGB lighting offers a range of effects as well as the usual color pallet, and you can also customize LED strips in terms of LED numbers. More importantly the software is snappy and easy to navigate, which is a key advantage compared to MSI's Center software for example, which often feels laggy.