How to start (Beginner's guide)
This document is the beginner's guide, helping to start using AlienFX-GUI from scratch. Please read it to understand some basic concepts and methods of the light/fan/power controls.
Light control is two-stage process. Unfortunately, light chips can not report active lights, so you need to DEFINE it as a first, one-time stage. After the lights was defined, you can control it any way you want, including hardware and software effects.
So let's start to define the lights!
First, switch to "Devices and Grids" tab (under "Lights" tab). In case you don't have lights defined, app will swith to it automatically. You will see the list of the light devices detected into the system at the left. You can click device name to select it or double-click to rename it as you wish.
Now let's try you luck! Community supply me pre-defined settings for various (but not all) hardware, so let's check do i have one for your gear:
Press "Detect Devices" button. You will see the dialogue with a list of devices that fit the hardware you have:
In case your light device(s) is listed, just check it and press the "Apply selected" button.
WARNING! DO NOT APPLY "SIMILAR" DEVICES, BUT EXACTLY THE ONE YOU HAVE ONLY! This can provide weird settings and will be hard to revert later!
In case your hardware is not listed, just press the "Not listed" button or close the dialogue. In this case you need...
So we need to find which lights are connected to the light chip. Please keep in mind - this process is not for light control; it's for detection only!
Let's find light first. Look at the 4 buttons at the right-top of the app window:
Look at your chassis/keyboard/monitor, etc. Does any light have a green color (you can change green to any other color by pressing the "Highlight color" button)? If yes, we found light! Now you can just type its name into the edit box below these buttons OR click on the grid cell to position it into the space. If not (or you just finished filling in the light name/grid), press the ">" button (or press Shift+Right arrow) to select the next hardware ID to check. Repeat this operation until all lights at your gear are defined.
You may need to switch devices at left to define lights for all of them.
You can use other navigation buttons - "|<" (Shift+Home) to navigate to the first defined light, ">|" (Shift+End) to the last defined, and "<" (Shift+Left arrow) to the previous one (defined or not).
The "Reset" button clears all current light data in case you set it up by mistake.
Some other support functions for editing:
- You can select light from the list to edit it
- You can change light name any time just typing it into edit box
- You can set special light types (Hardware power button, Indicator - like NumLock light, Wifi, HDD) into "Current light:" block
- You can left-click on grid cell to select light it assigned for
- You can right-click/click-and-drag on grid cell to clean it from any light assignment
- You can press "X" button near grid to clean this grid from all lights (careful!)
You can also add/remove a grid by pressing the "+" and "-" buttons at the grid block, as well as change the grid name by double-clicking on it.
Additionally, you can clear all device lights data (carefully!) by pressing the "Clear device" button.
And don't forget to press the "Save lights and grids" button when you finish backing it up and sharing it with the community - it helps other guys with the same hardware (it will be added to the detection database later)!
Now that lights is defined (you can also press the "Save" button to make sure it's stored), let's control it!
Select any tab under the "Lights" (e.g. "Colors").
First, create a Zone (press the "+" button at the zones block at left), you can double-click at the zone name to change it.
Assign lights into zones by selecting it from the grid (left-click on grid cell or click-and-drag; left-click on selected one to unselect) or by pressing the "Select from list" button, then select it from the global lights list that appears. The number to the left of the zone name reveals how many physical lights are assigned to this zone.
After you create a zone, assign a color or effect to it.
For colors, most of the light devices (except per-key RGB keyboards and some desktops - but you still can emulate it using the "Grid effect") have hardware effects for lights. Each phase of these effects is named "Action".
Press the "+" button at the "Actions" block to add a new action (you can also double-click on the actions list). Select action type, color, and other parameters at the "Actions settings" block. Zone lights should change their color to selected parameters immediately.
To add a software effect to a zone, switch to the corresponding tab; the process is different for different effects.
Create as many zones as you wish. You can use the "Gauge" setting (but it will not work if lights are not assigned to the grid) to point out how to process zone light positions for some software effects or make a gradient color set for it.
Check you have the "Fans and Power" tab - it will not be visible in case fan control is not supported or disabled on your device (check the "Settings" tab). Switch to it:
Please keep in mind - fan control is indirect, not direct. You can't override BIOS fan settings and stop the fan at high temperatures, and this is for good. You can only increase fan RPMs above BIOS settings.
Good to know:
- Fans can only be user-controlled in "Manual" power mode. All other modes block manual control, and fans will be controlled by BIOS settings.
- Fan control is INDIRECT, not direct. So you can't define exact fan RPMs, but give BIOS a hint to increase it based on sensor temperature.
- Different power modes (it's similar to "thermal profiles" in AWCC) have different fan profiles and CPU/GPU power limits - you can check it using something like HWINFO.
Manual fan control is sensor-driven, so you need to define how the fan will react to sensor temperature:
- Select the fan you need from the fan list.
- Select and check the sensors you want to use to control this fan from the Sensors list.
- Define the boost curve (reaction) for each of the checked sensors:
- Select fan.
- Click anywhere inside the fan curve window to add a new point (or click on an existing point to drag it to the other position).
- Keep pressing the left mouse button and drag it to the desired temperature/boost position.
- You can click the right mouse button at any point to remove it.
- Repeat for different sensor/fan combinations.
Good to know about fan control:
- Cooling systems are joined in modern notebooks. It's a good idea to set, for example, both CPU and GPU fans for CPU cooling, but at different rates.
- Setting boost over zero prevents the fan from stopping, even if the BIOS can do it. Set it to 0 if you want to tell the BIOS to stop the fan (but the BIOS can decide to keep it running for some hardware/temperature).
- It's a good idea to check max. boost for fans - it will detect possibilities and values to run fans over 100% of nominal. To do this, press the "Check Max. boost" button. This operation took some minutes and required no other fan control apps running.
- There are system keyboard shortcuts to change power mode: CTRL+ALT+0 for manual and CTRL+ALT+1..N for pre-defined by the system.
You can play with hardware effects, mixing different action types and settings.
The other big thing is software effects (but keep in mind it will stop hardware effects due to hardware limitations!). - Switch to the corresponding tab ("Events monitoring", "Ambient", "Haptics", "Grid effects"), select a zone, or create a new one and set it up. Effects in action shown at tray icon tooltip.
You can use the "Profiles" tab for automation — you can create as many profiles with different light and effect settings as you wish, then switch them manually or according to running/active application(s), power state, and even function key pressed. You can also assign a "Global" (device-wide) hardware effect for devices supporting it there.
Experiment, use your creativeness! Good luck!