ARGB vs RGB: What's the difference?

When you’re looking to make your PC build stand out from the crowd, you’ll invariably get to a point where you must pick between ARGB and RGB components. But what’s the difference between the two? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each technology? What do you need to bear in mind when handling each technology?

To jump straight to the crux of the matter: ARGB (Addressable Red Green Blue) is the more recent technology and the more capable of the two. If you want to have dynamic, flexible, configurable lighting then ARGB is really the only option worth considering. RGB lighting, by comparison, generally offers static, single-color lighting.

For example, if you had two fans, one ARGB and one RGB, the former can have flashy lighting capable of showing whole rainbows of color, while the RGB fan will generally be stuck showing a single color, or at best cycling pre-defined color patterns.

ARGB is basically the better technology, and the one you want to build with.

To be fair to RGB though, devices that use the older lighting technology tend to be more affordable as they are simpler to produce and as they’ve been around for longer. They don’t require newer motherboards to work either.

At this point you may be wondering what makes ARGB so different? The key difference with ARGB is that any ARGB-rated component features an Integrated Circuit (IC) that offers full programmable control over the lighting profile. As the name suggests, each individual LED can be addressed individually on the fly for complete control.

The microcontroller IC connects to your motherboard using a 3-pin 5V RGB header which can communicate with your system, and importantly with the likes of iCUE software for user control. This means you have access to the full RGB color space, timing control, and syncing with other components in your system. If you’ve set your heart on a colorful build, then it’s the use of these microcontrollers that will tie everything together.

The one downside with ARGB is that it tends to be more expensive than RGB to implement, which in turn means that the actual devices (fans, light strips, etc.) are a bit more expensive. The added control that the technology affords is generally considered to be worth the extra expense though.

No. You physically can’t as they use different connectors. This is a good thing though, as plugging an ARGB device into a 12V header would not be good for its health. There are adapters that will help you here, but we wouldn’t recommend trying to force this one.

But what should you do if you have ARGB devices, such as CORSAIR iCUE AR120 PWM fans, but your motherboard doesn’t have any ARGB headers? You need to use an ARGB controller, such as the CORSAIR iCUE COMMANDER CORE XT, to handle the hard work for you. Devices such as this allow you to keep using your existing motherboard but still enjoy all the best lighting options. These controllers also give you more options when it comes to fan speeds, so they’re a win-win all around.

In fact, if you look through the range of CORSAIR fans, you’ll discover that we try to help on this front as much as possible. The vast majority of our fans do have microcontrollers, and so can be considered ARGB devices, but we allow you to plug them into USB ports on your motherboard so that you have full control over the lighting in your build without having to worry about whether your motherboard supports ARGB or RGB devices. We’re nice like that.

More recently we have introduced iCUE LINK, a technology that makes building a system much easier thanks to a significant reduction in the wiring needed, plus it offers up more control too. Feel free to find out more about iCUE Link.