"Mystic Light" LED Lighting

Hello all!

I’m looking at a new MSI motherboard, which is equipped with “Mystic Light” LED lighting. As near as I can determine, this lighting feature is now all the rage and it can be found incorporated into cases, keyboards and other peripherals.

Sadly, it appears that the software app which controls this feature is only available for the W10 platform. This kinda reminds me of the days before fan control was built into the BIOS/UEFI. :rage: Has anyone had any success running this app in WINE, or do I need to buy a MS license and fire up a VM every time that I want to turn the LEDs on and off? First world problems, eh?

BTW - I noticed that there is a Mystic Light app for phones, but it looks like the PC Mystic Light app also needs to simultaneously running on the PC.

Thanks in advance for your insights.

Disclaimer: I have no experience with this, but:
For something to work in WINE, it first needs to be visible and usable by the underlying Linux. Remember that WINE isn’t anywhere close to being a “real” windows, it just translates Windows API calls to equivalents on Linux (sort of).
In other words: I doubt this will work in WINE just because it still needs a driver, and Linux is missing that.

I was actually always interested if that worked. If you can passthrough the RGB controller then this should work. But then again I’m not sure if that is even possible…

Yes.


On a side note, which board are you using? I know the Gigabyte boards have RGB configuration in the UEFI, I don’t know if MSI has something similar.

Whelp, I haven’t actually made a purchase as yet. I’m still in the planning stages and doing my home work. I was initially looking at the X399 Taichi, but as I have been hearing good things about the MSI boards, I’ve decided to have a closer look at them. Coincidentally, the Phanteks case which I am looking at, also supports Mystic Lighting (which I had never heard of until yesterday), so I’m trying to figure out if I can control it from Linux Land.

At the end of the day, I don’t “need” LED lighting, but it rubs me the wrong way for it to be present, without my ability to control it.

Thanks for the tip on the Gigabyte boards!

OK, first things first. Mystic Light in itself on a motherboard is nothing special. It is a marketing term just like Asus Aura, Gigabyte RGB Fusion and Asrock RGB LED (very creative) are. Basically they’re supposed so sound “cool” and “gamer”, but in the end it’s all the same. The implementation is a little different on them, but the LED strips they work with are the same. Some strips have different pins for different colors, but AFAIK all engines can reassign them and/or have adapters to switch the pins around.
Basically what I’m saying is, don’t get hung up on a case having a “Mystic Light compatible” badge, because basically every LED strip under the sun is compatible.

That being said, all those Marketing gimmicks do have a software side to them and that’s really where they differ. Those RGB engines can hook into a game or be directly implemented and show certain ingame statuses via case lighting (i.e. if you’re low on health it might glow red, if you’re low on ammo it might blink like crazy, whatever).
Those features will probably not work anytime soon on Linux though. And I’m also not sure whether that would work on a VM.

@FurryJackman also has a thread for RGB on Linux over here:

I haven’t tried the software, but it looks promising.

That one can also apparently control the NZXT Hue+, which is a separate RGB controller.

The aquacomputer farbwerk might also be an alternative, since it’s USB based and you could passthrough the USB device to windows.

Well, I had a look at some vids on the YouTube and the only “hangup” is that I find some (most) of the illumination patterns quite annoying and at night, I’d like to have the ability to turn all of the LEDs off, altogether. I’m not really interested in having the lighting linked to games, as that’s likely to push me the rest of the way over the edge. I’m assuming that as soon as I boot the machine, the MB is going to blink at me on a default pattern, which will annoy me and ultimately wee-wee me off.

My current X99 rig only has some subtle UV background lighting, so that the H2O plumbing can be seen. I’ve never had RGB in any of my cases, or on my keyboards, so this is a big step for me (ha ha). I’m not totally opposed to some soothing laid back RGB colors if I can find a way to select them, but I’d also really like to be able to turn it on and off. I suspect that the only way to do this is if I can pass the light controller through to a Windows VM, which at this point is anybody’s guess. BTW - that Farbwerk controller may be just the ticket … and not too expensive, either.

I just downloaded the MSI MB manual. Perhaps I can just kill the lighting altogether and call it a day. Either that, or go back to Plan A, the Taichi. Decisions, decisions …

Many thanks for your info and thought starters. Much appreciated!

Am I the only one annoyed by all these fucking lights?

Yes, the only person in the universe and multiverse, and also does that matter in this topic?

That’s possible with all boards as far as I know.

Well… yeah, it’s just an option :stuck_out_tongue:

Yes, usually that is a smooth rainbow transition (IDK about MSI boards though). I would guess that the MSI boards also have a basic configuration at least with the default presets in the UEFI, though I never had an MSI board so… yeah.

The Gigabyte boards actually have an RGBW header. The fourth PIN is intended for a dedicated white LED (because R+G+B usually gives a cold blue-ish white, the white LEDs are a warmer color), but you can also use an RGB+UV LED strip instead and control the UV with the W signal. I’m not aware that any other manufacturer (even dedicated RGB controllers) come with RGBW headers yet, but that might also be interesting for you.

Bummer most boards don’t come with UEFI images anymore :frowning:
You could take a look at some of Wendell’s MSI board reviews though, he does a UEFI tour at the end of the videos so maybe you can spot it there.

Not by a long shot. 9 times out of 10, these lighting schemes just look like chaos to me. While I will concede that these is a market for this, I already have enough chaos in my life.

Yes, I remember those days fondly, when we received a separate BIOS manual with the MB. Many times these manuals were thicker than the MB manual, itself and quite informative. Those were the days, eh? While our systems have become ever more complex (UEFI), our documentation has gotten decidedly worse.

So, the MSI manual devotes four pages to the Mystic Light app. There’s no mention, however, of any way to control the lighting without the app. There’s not even an indication of whether the LEDs can be manually disabled. Perhaps I’ll wander over to the MSI forum and at least register my complaint about how such built-in features should be OS agnostic.

That’s a great idea. I’ll stroll over to Wendell’s Learnatorium and check out the last few minutes of his MB review vids. Maybe I can spot an on/off option.