Gadgetory

hello do people ever hear with Heinrich in acts and if you're thinking about adding some flair to your gaming PC I think the number one thing that comes to your mind would be to add some sort of RGB lining to help showcase the components a little bit better now the problem is that if you end up mixing and matching different lighting components from different brands there isn't a unified solution to control them all for example if you're by thermal takes ring plus RGB fans and if you want to control lighting through Asus aura or MSI's mystic lighting software you'd have to invest in an additional controller that's again an additional cost in order for those devices to start talking to the motherboard and the same story goes with coarse a sliding ecosystem they really won't be able to talk with thermal takes lining systems so there's a whole lot of incompatibility issues that are kind of going all over the archana market right now in fact I have done a full in-depth video covering some of the Cork's with the RGB market as of right now so if you're interested in checking it out I'll leave a link right about here but today we're here to discuss NZXT s Q 2 ecosystem because supposedly this is bringing a lot more features and accessories to the table so let's check this out right after message from our sponsor the new vitality H 370 performance motherboard is well equipped for agent processors with 10 power phase design dual ultra and our two slots for storage and fantastic audio interface and dual RGB headers for addressable and 12 volt lighting accessories check out the full asrock 300 series line up down below alright so before I get to hue - and the new accessories I do want to go over something very important especially for existing hue plus users and that's compatibility so the new hue 2 accessories will not work with your existing hue + hub and the reason I say that is because the micro processors that are built inside the new led accessories will respond differently to the hue to controller compared to the original Q + a hub so that's something to keep in mind especially if you're planning on using the underglow accessory or the cable comb accessory you're out of luck if you're an existing hue plus user but if you want to use your existing nzc LED strips and if you want to take advantage of the new ecosystem from NZXT you can definitely use those components with the new hub and they'll work just fine so let's start off with the hue to lining kit that's priced around $75 they have redesigned the stuff to make it look a little bit more minimal you can say goodbye to the glossy plastic finish from the original hue Plus hub however the subtle power LED has been relocated inside the hub that actually makes it quite difficult to check power status so that's something to keep note of it still maintains that two and a half inch profile so you can install this on an SSD bracket included with your case and tuck it away but I would be extra cautious with cable management so in my case my primary workstation PC is the Lindley PC 11 dynamic chassis and it doesn't come with a separate power supply shroud so all the cables are pretty much visible so this again heavily depends from a case to case basis some of the improvements made to the hue 2 hub is the addition of two extra channels making a total of four instead of two from the original hue Plus hub and it now supports up to 40 LEDs or six accessories per channel this is certainly a welcoming change especially if you're working with compact builds so if you're working with a micro ATX or a mini ITX chassis and if you are intending to use the NASD q2 eco system you can actually get away with one q2 hub and mount as much as connect as much as leni accessories as possible if you're into that kind of thing I should also mention that powering the hue 2 hub requires a molex connector guys its molex I don't understand why NZXT is going with this particular connector it's 2018 they're supposed to use status so yeah it just doesn't make any sense so out of the box you get for 300 millimeter strips a micro USB cable the molex power connector and all the necessary hew connectors with extension cables as well but I have to mention that if you are using an existing Kraken a aia cooler you might need to check your motherboard connectors because if it only comes with a single USB 2.0 header you might be out of luck because again this connector connects to the PC or it communicates with the PC using the internal USB 2.0 header so if your motherboard comes with a single connector then again you kind of have to sacrifice either one of those so that's something to keep in mind now you could obviously bypass this issue by going with NZXT external USB 2.0 hub but that goes for around twenty-five dollars so it is next a dish like investment if you want to take advantage of all of NZ's components next up we have the hue to cable comb accessory price to have $30 this is a clip-on accessory for your motherboard CPU and GPU power cables if you want to add RGB lighting to those components as well they are daisy chained to a single connector which means you just have to plug it directly to the hue to hub to control the 18 addressable LEDs and here's a live look at the cable comb accessory once you have them installed on the power supply cables now the one thing that I did notice is that you know it the lighting actually doesn't showcase that well if you have them installed on custom black and white sleeves you're actually much better off using them if you have custom white cables because that's how it'll sort of diffuse that light a little bit better but right now it looks pretty good but it looked even a lot better if I had like cables but I don't have that to showcase it again this this is what they look like and of course as you can see I have them said to the fading effect and they do look quite amazing next up we have the hue to under glow accessory priced at $35 and as the name suggests this adds under glow lighting to your case so out of the box you get two modules that come with a metal housing and their respective cables and interestingly enough NZXT has added a diffusion layer on top of the LEDs to help soften the light output and I think that's very thoughtful installation on the other hand is pretty interesting so given that these modules are an external accessory NZXT actually requires you to use this pci expansion bracket inside your case to help ease the cable routing but this heavily depends on the type of chassis you're working with now in my case I use the PC 11 dynamic and it doesn't come with any cutouts at the bottom for the cable to seamlessly pass through so now I have an entire workstation PC sitting on top of the cable and that questions long-term durability and if you take a look at the bottom of the OL 11 dynamic case the right side of the chassis is covered with the magnetic dust filter so I actually had to offset the mesh filter to accommodate one of the modules so again compatibility is a concern for this underglow accessory especially if you're working with a case like the piece you learned dynamic and if you are if you have cases that don't actually have the elevated support that are sitting on standoffs then you basically won't be able to use the under cool lighting in the first place so highly I would highly recommend checking our compatibility and see if you actually have the space underneath your case if you can accommodate the lighting and then pull the trigger on this accessory lastly we have the hue to ambient kid and this thing costs $100 and for that NZXT claims that users will be able to achieve a more immersive desktop experience when it comes to setting up the mood for your desk setup and not to mention gaming so essentially it's a set of LED strips that are attached to the back of your monitor to help create this ambient lighting atmosphere out of the box you get the control hub that goes behind your monitor for 300 millimeter LED strips and for 250 millimeter strips a two point five meter USB cable to connect to the rear i/o of your PC the channel cable that connects the strips to the controller along with the extensions a power adapter for the hub and supporting plugs for different regions and some 3m dual lock strips to mount the controller to your monitor so the setup process is actually pretty straightforward in fact NCHS includes this nice little handy configuration guide that lets you configure the LEDs or gives you a nice little representation to mount the LEDs from various size monitors so anywhere between 21 inches all the way up to a 35 inch ultra wide monitor and I think that's pretty convenient but you need to make sure that you're connecting the five bulb pin to the 5 volt header when you're linking the two strips on the same channel so after installing the strips and the controller behind your monitor next thing that you need to do is connect the power cables and then the USB cable to the rear i/o of your PC and then firearm cam go into the lighting tab and select the smart tab and click on ambient for the ambient mode to take effect and right off the bat I've got admin this thing looks gorgeous now there are a few things that I did notice while watching content and gaming so for instance if you're in a video where there is a warm background the kid doesn't really completely replicate the color theme and you can't clearly see that over here and for the most part the neutral backgrounds exhibit a cooler white light and for images that are mostly blue the lighting does reflect the color scheme it mostly works and of course it does add that immersion level but it obviously doesn't replicate that color scheme for every case scenario so that's something to keep note of however I did notice that the transitions between different color themes where an s smooth as I expected it to be it certainly felt a little bit choppy and again I think this something that can that they can improve upon the next revision gaming on the other hand was a fantastic experience the ambient lighting kid certainly helps add that immersive layer and I thoroughly enjoyed my time playing around with it but I did wish if cam was able to sync up with the game engine so if you were being shot or if you're in a pursuit the lighting could have turned red or blue depending on the scenario but that wasn't the case with this ambient game so again that's something to keep note of but unfortunately that's where all the positive things about the hue to ambient kit come to an end because as you can see behind my monitor I actually don't have those strips or the ambient kit turned on and its sole reason for that is because the strips actually don't stick to mm monitor for a long time in fact I had it set it up one evening the next day I woke up the whole strip sort of fell apart the decent didn't really stick towards the plastic finish on my monitor so it really isn't it doesn't really work with my panel in fact it could even get worse if your monitor features a glossy plastic surface now I did contact NC XD about this issue and it is quite concerning because it is an ambient kit after all and if it doesn't really stick to the back of your monitor then it defeats the purpose of the whole ambient experience in the first place and they're obviously working on to fixing the whole adhesive issue in fact they are offering customers with some additional replacement 3m strips they did send me some additional 3m double-sided tape but that didn't do the trick either because I used them to install the strip's once again and unfortunately all I have to report I have to report that they just don't work with my monitor so again I can't really recommend this particular accessory for now because you really won't be able to get the best out of the box experience at least for now although you could you know go around this your way by installing you know iron tapes or something that's maybe well chrome might work in your case if you want to do it your way if you want to add some DIY perks to this particular setup so why don't we hop onto a quick demo to take a look at the lighting systems with the hue to lighting kit and of course the ambient kit as well alright so welcome to the cam software walkthrough as you can see I do have my system set up over here with the hue lighting kit and I have disabled the Animax RGB fans on my radiator just so that it doesn't fiddle around or doesn't really mean I mess around with the huge letting kid because you guys really want to see what the effects look like in real time so let's hop onto cam and you guys are probably aware of the UI now I have two channels activated onto the Hugh to kid that's installed inside my PC channel two is the exterior lighting so if I turn that off you'll be able to notice that the exterior lighting is turned off and if I turn off channel 3 that's the interior lighting of this system so let's go back and turn on channel 3 and channel 2 and if I want to play around with the effects or if I want to sync the lighting effects across both those channels I can just click on both of them and select for example if I want a spectrum way I can just go ahead and click that effect and hit apply and it just automatically just translates into this rainbow RGB effect there are various effects that you can play around with like breathing fading there's also pulse effect which is actually a pretty cool again multitude of effects that you can play around with which is pretty awesome don't forget that all of these LEDs are addressable so if you want to go ahead and customize these lights to an individual color you can certainly do that by just clicking on these individual like light boxes and it will and you can go ahead and change the color of those by ourselves now there are some smart lighting effects that are also integrated within cam software so if you won the lining to react to your CPU or GPU temperatures you can certainly do that in this case I have them assigned to GPU or if I want to switch things up to CPU I can certainly do that as well the ambient mode doesn't really work with the hue to strips up because I don't have because in order for ambient mode to kick in you'll need at least a minimum of three strips per channel but in this case I only have two accessories connected to one channel which is why I won't be able to take advantage of that inside the case alright so taking a look at the hue to ambient kit you do have the option to disable the lighting per channel but in order for ambient mode to work you need to have both the channels enabled and of course you have to go into the smart option to enable the ambient mode to take place and of course there is the option to calibrate the monitors or lighting across the monitors so once you go through that process then that's all that's how the mi mode will sort of kick in so that's something to keep note of but if you want to go ahead and you know select this custom preset if you don't like the ambient mode you can go ahead and playing around with different effects like breathing fading there's also a spectrum wave there is super rainbow there is just a multitude of lining effects that you can take advantage of if you're really into spicing up your lighting or the ambient mood within your desk setup alright guys so this has certainly been an interesting video for me personally because I had a lot of expectations for the new hue to EQ system particularly the ambient kid from NZXT because it certainly adds a lot of flare in fact I really wanted to have an ambient lighting set up behind my monitor to help with you know b-roll shots and all that kind of stuff but unfortunately it doesn't really work that well it's particularly not suitable for my monitor the strip's really don't attach in fact the replacement the replacement strips didn't really work out that well so it's kind of a bummer as for the rest of the accessories they are obviously pretty cool I will mention that you are kind of stuck to the whole ecosystem within NZXT because if you were to add you know lighting accessories from Thermaltake or some other kids that are addressable you won't really be able to communicate or be you won't be able to customize the colors from those accessories or third-party accessories within camp because it's its own little bubble because it has micro processors that only communicate with any z-axis controller so those are some of the things that you'll need to keep in mind before pulling the trigger and I want to hear your thoughts on q2 from NZ XD what do you guys think about it are you willing to pay the price premium to get into their own ecosystem especially if you're willing to compromise on adding third-party lonny accessories to your gaming PC are you willing to take that risk but most importantly I do want to quickly go over NZXT scams software because I've had a lot of issues with cam in the past years because my crack and cooler won't get detected within cam and I've had a lot of other lighting controller issues with cam as well there's a whole bunch of reports on cam software instabilities on online so it certainly has its own quirks and MZ has a long way to go especially when it comes to tweaking and tuning their own cam software and of course taking care of the accessory kits in the first place but until then we just gonna have to wait and see what they have down the pipeline but yeah let me know what you guys think about the whole q2 lighting kit in the comments below amiibo with Heinrich annex thank you so much watching make sure to check out our new boo sequins channel for the latest tech news and rumors and of course you can check out some relevant content right over here I'm signing off and I'll see you guys in the next one